Why Do Consumers Purchase Food Digitally?

Consumers shop for food digitally when they’re running low on items and can’t find them in-store

July 12, 2016 | Retail & Ecommerce | CPG

Consumers are no longer just purchasing food products from a grocery store. Indeed, many are purchasing their produce digitally, according to June 2016 research. For some, it’s because they’re looking to buy items they can’t find on their routine grocery trip.

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The Harris Poll surveyed US digital buyers who had purchased a food product digitally in the past six months. The biggest reason respondents said they purchase food digitally is because they want to buy products they can’t find at their routine grocery trip.

For older digital buyers—ages 45 and up—this was more of a reason to shop for products digitally than for younger digital buyers, though it was still No. 1 among all age groups. For example, 64% of respondents ages 55 to 64 said they shop digitally for food products because they can’t find the items on their routine grocery trips. To compare, 40% of 35- to 44-year-olds felt the same.

Respondents also said they purchased food products digitally because they were running low on a critical item and couldn’t make it to the store, or because they needed to replace some of their routine grocery shopping trips. Younger buyers were more likely to so because of these reasons than their older counterparts. In fact, 33% digital buyers ages 18 to 34 said they purchased food digitally because they were running low on an item and weren’t able to make it to the store. That was nearly twice as many as the 17% of digital buyers ages 65 and older who agreed.

Some digital buyers purchased food products digitally to replace all of their routine grocery shopping trips. But that reason ranked low across the board, for all generations.

The Harris Poll did not ask about lower prices online, but other research confirms this is also a reason for digital grocery shopping. An April 2016 survey from Market Track found that nearly a third of US grocery buyers said they would shop for more groceries digitally if the prices were better than they were in stores.