Supermarkets don’t retain online customers
New research by Kingston University has suggested that supermarkets are failing to retain their online customers and need to find more imaginative ways of trying to appeal to them.
A team from the University’s Faculty of Business and Law has demonstrated that many people switch to online shopping but then abandon it because they find it a chore, or because their circumstances change.
“When someone starts buying books or music online they don’t normally stop and go back to bookshops or CD sellers. But that’s exactly what is happening with many online grocery shoppers,” one of the researchers, Dr Chris Hand, says.
Although the past few years have seen significant growth, online grocery purchases only account for around 3.2% of total grocery sales in the UK, whereas overall internet sales account for nearly 10% of all retail sales, according to figures published in Marketing Week in November 2010. “Even though the UK online market is regarded as the most advanced in the world, online groceries are still only a niche market,” Dr Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley from the Kingston Business School team adds.
The Kingston team said that, besides improving the quality of their service, online supermarkets should try to tie-in customers, for example with a monthly subscription to the service instead of delivery charges or special offers available only to online customers.
These conclusions were reinforced by a postal survey of more than 1,100 online shoppers. “One finding that came over very clearly was that internet and supermarket shopping are not mutually exclusive – online shopping is complementary rather than seen as a substitute,” Dr Dall’Olmo Riley concluded. “Reverting back to the traditional mode of shopping is easy because shoppers never completely stop shopping in traditional stores.”
The Kingston research was published in the European Journal of Marketing. The team has already completed a second investigation into online grocery shopping, looking at online shoppers’ loyalty to particular brands.
