Survey: How popular is online grocery delivery?

4/3/2019
An increasing number of retailers are offering some form of online grocery delivery, but are customers responding?

According to a new survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adult consumers from enterprise software provider JDA, 24% of respondents have used a grocery delivery service for their weekly shopping trip.

Most of those consumers do not use online grocery delivery every time they shop. A leading 27% use grocery delivery at least once per month, and 18% use it every week. However, more than half only use online grocery delivery once every three months (22%), once every six months (13%), or once a year (19%).

Consumers who participate in online grocery delivery demonstrate a clear preference in what type of service they use. Almost half (48%) prefer home delivery services such as Peapod and Instacart. Another 28% favor curbside delivery. Thirteen percent prefer grocery meal box kits such as Hello Fresh, and the remaining 11% use a mix of any of these three services.

A 42% plurality of respondents who have not used grocery delivery services say they prefer the flexibility of choosing their own products. Another 20% simply haven’t gotten around to trying it yet. Fifteen percent cite the cost, and 14% say their local or preferred grocery store does not offer online grocery delivery. Nine percent do not find it convenient for their lifestyle.

Other notable responses include:

• Seventy-nine percent of respondents shop more than one grocery store, only 21% are loyal to one grocer.

• Forty-nine percent of respondents who shop more than one grocery store do so for product variety and 48% want to save money or obtain promotional discounts. Only 3% seek a unique in-store experience.

• Almost three-quarters of respondents selected product assortment (43%) or price (30%) as the most important factor for their grocery store shopping experience. Much smaller percentages chose environmentally friendly/sustainable products (11%), catering to a personal lifestyle such as vegan or gluten-free (9%), and transparency of product ingredients (7%).
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