Online grocery is still at the development stage in many places, and earning only a marginal share of sales revenue. Even in the UK, where ordering groceries online has been established for years, online sales account for only around 5 percent of the sector’s revenues.
With online options constantly expanding however, the share of online grocery sales could well increase in the future, especially as online grocery satisfies a number of consumer requirements.
10 reasons your customers will try online grocery shopping
1. Curiosity
Curiosity is a key human characteristic. It is the reason why many consumers who have until now been satisfied with in-store grocery shopping will try out online offers. If these offers not only satisfy their curiosity but also provide a good shopping experience, some consumers may shop for groceries online more frequently in the future.
2. Flexibility
In-store grocery shopping provides consumers with many advantages. It also imposes restrictions on them in terms of availability time frames. Online grocery on the other hand helps customers to plan ahead their food shopping from order to delivery so that it fits flexibly into their daily schedule.
3. Time Saving
Time is a precious good. In-store grocery shopping including driving to the store, finding parking, and waiting in line at checkout can be quite time consuming – time that many customers would prefer to put to better use. When coupled with timely delivery user-friendly online offers, in contrast, can help to speed up grocery shopping.
4. No Closing Hours
Most everybody probably has experienced arriving at a store late only to find it closed. People in the workforce in particular do not always manage to get to the store during its opening hours. An online store in contrast is always open for business. So consumers can order groceries online at any time of the day or night – whenever they have the time to do so.
5. Spontaneous Shopping
Nowadays nearly everybody has a smartphone constantly within reach, so grocers’ online offers are available instantly and grocery shopping must not be limited to in-store or your PC at home. Instead, customers can order anything they want in any situation – on the commute to work, at home in front of the refrigerator or even in-store – if their favorite pizza happens to be out of stock there again.
6. Home Delivery
Home delivery service, which many food retailers offer to their customers, can save consumers more than just time. They also no longer need to struggle with heavy shopping bags. This benefit can make life much easier especially for older people or individuals with disabilities for whom in-store shopping can be challenging.
7. Greater Variety of Choice
A local grocery store has only limited storage space and cannot keep in stock every product that a consumer may want. These limitations do not apply to an online store so online grocers can offer their customers a much wider range of products than is likely to be available in-store. Thus an online grocery store can fulfill even the most unusual requests.
8. Attractive Product Presentation
Attractive product presentation is the key to doing good in-store business. An online store has many additional formats to present products and persuade consumers to purchase them – from neatly arranged product images and informative product descriptions to recipes and videos on how to prepare them.
9. Attractive Deals
Profit margins are mostly low in grocery and additionally online grocery requires numerous complex and costly processes. That is why online grocery shopping is often more expensive than in-store. Yet attractive online deals are quite common especially now that a large number of grocers are competing for online customers. So online offers can even be attractive for penny pinchers.
10. Convenient Price Comparison
Comparing in-store prices is extremely tedious and time consuming work. That is the reason why price comparison sites for online shopping have evolved that show the consumer in real time which retailer offers the product in question at the lowest price. As online grocery is becoming established price comparison sites will emerge for this sector too.
Consumers buy from sellers that make buying simple.
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This post was originally featured on mgm Commerce, and is republished here with permission.
