Grocery Delivery Survey: Repeat Customers Likely in Future

Online grocery and grocery delivery services like Peapod and Amazon Fresh have started catching on with consumers in recent years, according to a recent report from Internet Retailer. While this segment still only makes up a small part of the overall grocery market, it does appear to be growing. And since grocery is one of the largest retail categories in terms of sales, there’s potential for even more growth in the years to come. So how many consumers have already used grocery delivery services? And how many are likely to do so in the future? We asked 1,000 respondents on September 8-9 about their thoughts on grocery delivery.

Grocery Consumers

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 30% of respondents said they’ve purchased groceries within the past day. 53% purchased in the last week. 10% purchased in the past month. Just 3% last purchased groceries more than a month ago. And 4% said they aren’t grocery consumers. More specifically, 85% of those grocery consumers said that they do their shopping at regular grocery stores. 8% go to specialty grocery stores. 5% shop at convenience stores for groceries. 5% regularly buy groceries online. 3% use other grocery delivery services. And 4% get groceries from other sources, like big box stores.

Grocery Delivery

Overall, just 6% of respondents said that they use grocery delivery or online grocery services regularly. 11% have used them multiple times in the past. And 7% have done so at least once. Amazon was the most popular grocery delivery service mentioned by respondents. But some also used Peapod, Walmart, Shoprite and Safeway. And 73% of those who have used grocery delivery services said they’ve been at least somewhat satisfied with the experience.

Future Consumers

In general, 55% of respondents ranked cost as their most important factor when it comes to buying groceries. 25% consider quality to be most important. Just 8% said they value convenience, which could be a big factor in convincing consumers to try grocery delivery services. But convenience was still ranked higher than other factors like ingredients, nutritional value, brand name and sustainability. Looking forward, 28% of respondents said they are likely to use grocery delivery services at some point over the next year. Of those who have already used grocery delivery services, 67% said they would be at least somewhat likely to use such a service again in the next year. Those consumers were also more likely to value convenience when considering grocery purchases, and slightly less likely to value price above all the other factors.

Key Takeaways

Convenience seems to be one of the major factors driving the increase in grocery delivery consumers. So for companies that offer grocery delivery, it’s important to make the process of selecting and retrieving items as easy as possible, otherwise the potential benefits disappear. There also seems to be a lot of potential for repeat business in the grocery delivery sector. So companies could potentially use that as an opportunity to make the process even easier for consumers by offering features like the ability to save past orders or set items to automatically ship each week or month. Some grocery consumers are even willing to pay a bit extra for convenience, although price is still a major determining factor. So delivery services should also consistently address people's perceptions of issues related to cost and quality in order to really compete with traditional grocery stores. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Amazon Fresh by Glenn Fleishman under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on September 8-9 via AYTM’s online survey panel.