Taking Stock;
How Covid-19 has Changed Grocery Shopping

By Bill Fonvielle.

How we shop – and what we expect from the shopping experience – has changed substantially during the Covid-19 pandemic. With vaccination programmes now being rolled out with speed in both the US and the UK, and lockdown restrictions in Britain easing this week to allow non-essential retail to reopen, business leaders in the retail sector need to understand what has changed, what has remained stable, and – most importantly – what they should be doing to plan for the post-pandemic world.

Grocery retail has been at the forefront of the changes to our shopping habits in the last year. To see how this part of the retail sector has been transformed, we sent out a survey to a representative sample of consumers [1] in the United States earlier this year. The data we gathered show how the pandemic has changed consumer habits and expectations regarding grocery shopping, and allowed us to gain some insights into what the future might hold for the sector.

Pandemic has driven significant changes to grocery shopping habits

The data we gathered from our survey confirm large-scale shifts in the way we are buying our food, with those who reported shopping more frequently before the Covid-19 pandemic started generally saying that their grocery shopping habits have changed more. Overall, 68% of respondents said the pandemic had altered the way they buy groceries significantly or moderately, and fewer than one in 10 respondents said it hadn’t changed the way they shop at all.

Another notable change is to shopping frequency. Forty per cent of the survey group said that they have been shopping for groceries less often because of the pandemic, while only 3% said that they were buying groceries more frequently. Women were more likely than men to have reduced the frequency of their grocery purchases; indeed, women reported a greater shift in the way they shop for groceries than men. This may reflect a greater caution about Covid among women than among men, which echoes studies by Dartmouth-Gallup [2] and Galasso, Pons and Profeta. [3]

A further 23% of respondents said they are making more use of online services, such as home delivery and kerbside pickup – a change that was more marked in respondents over 30 years of age, with older people being around three times more likely than younger groups to use these services.

Differences in income not significant

A notable finding from our data is the low impact of income levels on how respondents answered. The data gathered in this survey suggest that the pandemic has affected the grocery shopping habits of people in every income level more or less equally.

However, this situation may be about to change: while groceries have been selling at fairly constant levels during Covid – since everyone has to eat – there’s big pent-up demand, and with consumer confidence returning we may see a boom in the sales of luxury food items, driven by more affluent households.

The future of grocery shopping

Managers in all sectors should be looking to align their strategies with the expectations of their customers in the post-pandemic world. Our survey results suggest that those organisations that have embraced digital transformation have made the correct decision, and that those who have reacted slowly risk being left behind.

We asked our survey respondents whether they believed grocery shopping would return to the old, pre-pandemic normal, remain as it has been during the pandemic or innovate further in the years to come. The most popular answer was that it would remain as it has been during Covid – with many of us permanently replacing a weekly trip to a brick-and-mortar store with online ordering, home delivery and/or kerbside pickup. Crucially, though, 23% of respondents expect the industry to transform still further, offering consumers new and hitherto unknown innovations in the years to come.

Recently published analysis by McKinsey aligns closely with ours. Their consumer-sentiment surveys, conducted at about the same time as our research, show shoppers in the US, the UK and across Europe reporting large-scale changes to their grocery shopping habits – and these changes look like they’re going to be permanent. In the UK, 50% of consumers they surveyed have adopted and intend to continue using new and innovative online purchasing methods; in Europe, the figure is 47%; while in the US, it’s around 35% and growing strongly.

Those businesses banking on a swift return to the certainties of their pre-pandemic business model are, then, likely to be disappointed – and in need of a swift course correction.

Consumer loyalty shaken by Covid

While both habits and expectations regarding how we purchase our groceries have definitely changed, managers and leaders in the grocery retail sector must also reckon with reduced loyalty among their customers.

McKinsey report that, “of the three quarters of Americans who changed their shopping behaviour since COVID-19 began, around 40 percent say they have changed brands, with the level of brand switching doubling in 2020 compared to 2019”. It’s the same story in the UK and across Europe: in the UK, 72% of consumers have changed stores, brands or the way they shop, while for Europe as a whole, that figure is 67%.

In each case, convenience and value were the biggest drivers of these changes, but other significant factors include a wish to find brands that reflect personal values and a desire to support local businesses.

This reduction in loyalty, taken together with the changes to the way consumers shop for groceries, should be ringing alarm bells for those in the sector. Our research indicates that loyalty is driven by meeting – or exceeding – customers’ ideal expectations, not by merely meeting customer need. If the latter is your focus and you offer no value beyond it, you can’t expect loyalty from customers who are increasingly less likely to simply visit their nearest store, and can instead choose a new retailer with the simple click of a button.

Evolving your business for the post-Covid world

So, if you’re a manager or owner of a grocery retail outlet or chain, what should you do in response to these profound and probably permanent shifts in consumer purchasing habits? How can you foster loyalty and drive repeat business when technology makes it easier than ever before to shop around?

The goal must be to find out what your customers actually expect from an ideal grocery retailer. Not what you think they expect, and not what you’d like them to expect, but what they really expect. This is not a simple task, and frequently used data-gathering methods like customer-satisfaction surveys and NPS questions won’t get you there. And, of course, you can’t begin to find ways to meet – or exceed – these expectations until you know with confidence and precision what they are.

Promising Outcomes can provide you with the data you need – identifying the changes that would give you the biggest ROI and most effectively help your business to meet evolving customer expectations. We can show you what your customers value, how you measure up to your competitors, and what you should be doing right now to ensure that your business thrives in an ever-more-competitive grocery retail sector.

If your business could benefit from actionable, prioritised and customer-focused data, talk to us today.

1. The survey was completed by 250 respondents in the United States in February 2021. It consisted of an online questionnaire, and was created and disseminated using SurveyMonkey.
2. https://voxeu.org/article/gender-differences-covid-19-perception-and-compliance
3. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201007182331.htm