Online Food &

Grocery:

The Shopper

Perspective 2014

SAMPLE EXTRACT

Evolution Insights Ltd

Foundry St

Leeds

West Yorkshire

LS11 5QP

www.evolution-insights.com

Evolution Insights: Shopper Insight

Series

Disclaimer

Please note

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Evolution Insights Ltd.

The content of this report is based on information gathered in good faith from both primary and secondary sources and is believed to be correct at the time of publication. Evolution Insights can however provide no guarantee regarding the accuracy of this content and therefore accepts no liability whatsoever for any actions taken that subsequently prove incorrect.

© Evolution Insights Ltd 2014

About Evolution Insights

Evolution offer a range of products &

services for clients in the field of shopper

research:

Off-the-shelf research

Evolution’s off the shelf research

publications deliver affordable insight

into shopper motivation and behaviours

in UK food, drink and grocery

Insight Plus

Insight Plus offers your business the

opportunity to engage in any of our

regular shopper research projects in

advance of publication, tailoring the

scope to suit your needs

Bespoke Consulting

As publishers of research, we are able to

draw upon a wealth of existing

proprietary data for consulting projects –

helping to better inform and shape any

further research requirements

Our research and analysis helps clients develop

targeted shopper marketing initiatives designed to

influence shoppers at the point of purchase.

We use a range of research methodologies to discover

genuine insights. Our research incorporates a broad

spectrum of robust qualitative and quantitative research

techniques.

As a leading publisher of shopper research, we are

ideally placed to offer your business actionable

shopper insight.

Evolution is a leading research consultancy

specialising in shopper motivation and

behaviour. We deliver off-the-shelf, tailored

and bespoke research for manufacturers,

retailers and agencies.

Sign up for Shopper Trend Report, our free monthly newsletter

offering analysis and commentary on topical shopper issues.

Contents

Key Findings and Summary 5 Online grocery shopping journey – All Touch Points 33

Online shoppers preferred filtering methods: 34

Online Grocery Shopping: At a Glance 8

The UK Food & Grocery Market 9 Shoppers that would prefer to sort by lowest price

first:

37

UK Channel Forecast Changes 10 Average spend 38

Tesco 11 Most important factor when choosing the delivery slot 39

Asda 12 Shoppers changing habits 40

Sainsbury’s 13

Morrisons 14 Online Drivers & Trends 41

Ocado 15 Opinions on Delivery & Substitutions 42

Dark Stores 16 Abandoned a shopping cart 44

Technology for Grocery Search 17 Customer reviews online 47

New food product release 48

The Online Grocery Shopper 19 Drivers to online shopping 49

Frequency of Grocery shopping Online 20 Shoppers’ Positives of Online Shopping 50

Demographic profile of online food & grocery

shoppers

21 Barriers/Dislikes of Online Grocery Shopping 51

Non-online shoppers 52

Online Retailer Choice 22 Barriers to Online Grocery Shopping 53

Online Primary Shopper Share, 2014 23 Dislikes of online shopping 54

Primary Online Shopper Share 24 Shoppers’ Negatives of Online Shopping 55

Retailer Choice: Shopper Profile, by Retailer 25

Shopper loyalty 26 Online Categories 57

Retailer choice 27 Categories shoppers would avoid buying online 58

Online Shopping Habits 28 Shopper Typologies 61

Location and time 29 Shoppers Segmentations 63

Online grocery shopping modalities 30

Online grocery shopper journey – starting point 32 Methodology 66

The Online Food & Grocery market in the UK only makes up around 6% of the

whole grocery market. However, it is the fastest growing channel, and one of the

most sophisticated grocery channels in the world - It is currently worth around

£5.6 billion, and growing.

Supermarkets

60%

Convenience Stores

22%

Discounters 8%

Online 6%

Other 4%

The UK Food & Grocery Market 2014

Online Grocery Shopping: At a Glance

Tesco are continuing to dominate not only the UK food & grocery market in general, but

the constituent channels within that, including the online channel. The online arm of the

group brought in £127 million last year, and reported results of +11% growth in the year

2013/14. Tesco are making efforts to improve their Click & Collect offering by adding

more collection locations, including a plan to launch 50+ non-store collection points in

2014/15, such as schools, libraries and sports centres, to add to their impressive

collection of over 1750 locations.

Boundaries between the online and offline world are becoming

blurred. The challenge, and opportunity, for retailers is not just to

have (and be able to operate across) multiple channels. It is to

meet the rapid changes in consumer behaviour that we are seeing

as technology opens up new horizons for them.

of UK customers use a

mobile phone to

compare prices or look

up reviews in store 59.7% of Tesco UK customers shop across 2 or more channels,

including stores and online

Tesco in the UK Online Food & Grocery Market

43%

Source: Tesco.com

Online Grocery Shopping: At a Glance

The Online Grocery Shopper

Demographic profile of online food & grocery shoppers5

6% 60

%

53%

62

%

78

%

62

%

51

%

39

%

27

%

67

%

50

% 55

%

46

%55%

50%

60%

51%

50%

49%

58%

51%

69%

Increase of 11%

penetration of online

shoppers from 2013

56%

57%

Online Shopping Habits

Location and time where shoppers

order their online grocery shopping

3% 6%3%1%

5%

28%41%

13%

Location and time where shoppers

have their online grocery shopping

delivered

2%5%4%

1%2%

39%31%

16%

At work –

13% (down

2% from 2013

At work –

12% (down

2% from 2013

Online Shopping Habits

Most important factor when choosing the delivery slot:

Time of day Cost of delivery Day of week

44%

42%

43%

43%

13%

16%

2014

2013

Shoppers place little importance

on the day of the delivery,

compared to the time and the

cost – and even less than last

year.

Online Drivers & Trends

8%

9%

16%

17%

26%

27%

57%

I never intended to check out

I didn’t like the layout of the website/couldn’t find what I was looking for

I didn’t qualify for free delivery

The shopping cart was more expensive thanexpected

I just wanted an idea of costs so I could compareto another retailer

The website/app was running too slow

I ran out of time/had to do something else

The reasons that shoppers abandoned their shopping cart:

Online Drivers & Trends

Shoppers’ Positives of Online Shopping - uninitiated responses

Note: Size of text does not reflect the number of times the response was mentioned

Shopper Typologies

Evolution’s extensive research into online shopping behaviour has allowed us

to segment shoppers into varying shopping styles. It is of course possible for

individual shoppers to change as their circumstances change, but we believe it

is useful to understand different modalities based on differing circumstances.

Special Offer Junkie – Shoppers whose first thought is to look at the special offers

section, and to seek out special offers within other sections.

Speed Freak – Pre-plans the majority of items and goes straight to them with little

browsing.

Relaxed Browser – Generally enjoy online shopping and take their time to browse all

sections and results.

Frustrated Technophobe – Not the best at using technology and often struggle to

find the items they want. Find it a frustrating experience.

Creature of Habit – The main items bought tend not to differ between shops. Most

items are bought from the favourites section.

Methodology

Secondary and desk research

Preliminary qualitative and quantitative research

Main quantitative surveys

Detailed accompanied shops, including pre- and

post-shop in-depth interviews & Remote

Moderated Usability Test

Insights

Evolution carried out a preliminary survey of

100 shoppers, to test questions for the main

survey and establish an initial view of market

penetration. Detailed online store audits were

also completed, to facilitate awareness and

commentary of online grocery retailer features,

functionality and initiatives. Initial insights

gained were used to help further design the

main survey.

Two quantitative surveys were utilised in this

report. The first was part of a wider research

programme and had a sample of UK adults

who said they regularly shop for food & grocery.

This survey was used to determine overall

penetration rates, barriers to online food and

grocery retailing and offline retailers used. The

second survey included only shoppers who

shop for food and grocery online at lease

occasionally. This sample of 1000 completed

all questions relating to their online shopping

behaviour.

Comprehensive and detailed assessment of all

the data received was then used to discover

insights. Throughout this process, primary

research was supported by secondary research

drawing on Evolution’s proprietary databases,

national statistics, news and industry

resources. Evolution’s consultants also

maintained close relationships with industry

figures across retailers and manufacturers.

Evolution’s methodology

Methodology

Detailed shopper insights were gained

from 1,000 UK adults said they shopped

online at least occasionally. The

questionnaire was fully representative of

the online grocery shopper population in

the UK.

The survey contained 27 questions

relating to topics outlined to the left – in

addition to standard demographic

profiling questions.

The questions were designed to give

maximum insight into shopper’s

motivation and behaviour before, during

and after online grocery shopping.

Categories NOT shopped online

Delivery, substitutes and spend

Circumstances, approach and modality while shopping online

Missions in terms of frequency and most regular

Context of online shop

Drivers of store choice

Online retailer usage in terms of frequency and most regular

Barriers for non- online grocery shoppers

Frequency of online grocery shopping

Demographic profiling

Topics of questions in quantitative survey

Our reports are available through our subscription service, or on a one off basis, for

more details please contact me directly.

Craig Bradley

Managing Director

craig.bradley@evolution-insights.com

0113 394 4670

Reports form only a small part of our Shopper research, please contact us if

you have any bespoke requirements.

evolution insights ltd

Round Foundry Media Centre

Foundry Street

Leeds

LS11 5QP

Contact Us

2015 Report List

Channels

These reports will give a holistic view on where shoppers go, how frequently and most importantly why they

choose the different channels to fulfil their shopping needs. This collection will be comprised of the seven

following reports:

Online

Click & Collect

Supermarket

Convenience

Discounter

High Street

Non-standard

Missions

These reports takes an in-depth look at Shopper Missions and examines shoppers’ behaviour across all

missions in relation to frequency, patterns, channel, planning, spend and more. The Mission reports are

made up of four separate reports, of which one will be split into three occasions:

Main shop

Top-up

Meal for Tonight

On the go Breakfast – Lunch - Snacking

2015 Report List

The use of Digital Devices for Food & Grocery Shopping

The Digital Shopping report looks at how these technologies are being adopted by shoppers. Specifically, we

will look at technology penetration and usage, apps, contactless payment and social media – all in relation to

the Food & Grocery sector.

Health & Product Information

Explores shoppers’ attitudes to health and healthy eating, nutrition labels and how healthy shoppers are in

their own opinion. We will also provide an overview of the drivers associated with buying healthy products

Planning & Store Influence

In this report we look at shoppers’ behaviour both before and after the shop but not at their behaviour whilst

in-store. We will see how shoppers plan their grocery shop (if at all) and how much food they have in their

homes in stock. Then we take a look at when individual meals are planned. We will also look at decision

making in-store - when a shopper is confronted by a number of products they have to make a decision based

on a number of different criteria which they will choose on that particular occasion. In the main (and in the

interests of simplicity) we categorise these as Price Vs Taste/Quality Vs Health Vs Brand.

Loyalty Cards, Brand Match & Voucher Redemption

This is a new report that will look into the main retailers offering of loyalty cards in terms of what they offer

and how they work, who used them and if they are redeemed. Brand match is a concept that has been taken

up by most of the large retailers, so we will look at how individual retailers define their brand match, what

they offer in return, and what shoppers think of it. We will also see how many people are using vouchers in

Food & Grocery.