What is the Online Grocery Store?
Online Grocery store is either a Grocery store or in complex words, it is a brick-and-mortar supermarket which allows users to order grocery items online while staying at home. The ordered items usually have delivery charges when delivered to local areas near the store.
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Grocery delivery service is gaining influence for some time. This service is available throughout Europe (popular in the USA), Asia and North America. However, this service is widely available mostly in urban areas due to huge demand. This service is done through mobile apps and E-commerce websites.
This industry is expanding rapidly. Today, in this busy era most people don’t have enough time to actually go to the market and most people prefer to order everything online using their phones and not actually going to the market to save their time and energy.
Advantages of Online Grocery
There are several advantages to use this service according to the situation. According to the situation means that sometimes old age or women with young kids cannot go to the grocery stores directly as they may face a lot of difficulties while doing it. However, here are some of the main advantages that anyone can relate to.
Save Transportation Cost:
There are a lot of people driving miles away from home to buy grocery items and have to carry all the stuff. Using online grocery can not only save their transportation cost to some extent but also they don’t have to worry to carry all the stuff as it will be delivered right in their doorstep.
Save Time:
In this era, everyone is busy making money and improving living standards and doesn’t have much time or they are tired enough to go to the grocery stores on their own and carry all the stuff. Grocery shopping takes a lot of time. Online grocery shopping is one of the best solutions to this. You can buy stuff, keep a check on sale items and so on.
Save Pain:
There are number of situations where it is not possible to go to the market to buy anything on their own and need to rely on others. Some people like old persons who find it difficult to go to the market and lift heavy stuff. Online grocery shopping and grocery delivered to your doorstep would be an amazing luxury for these people.
The history and future of Online Shopping
Online Grocery’s influence is increasing day by day. The market value has doubled from 2016-18, this is showing that the consumers are now taking an interest and feeling comfortable while ordering foodstuff online.
Meanwhile, the major product that is popular in online grocery is CPGs (consumer packaged goods). Furthermore, there are different items stills consumers are not entirely feel comfortable while buying but it will increase as the familiarity and trust in online grocery.
This now has become a point of interest and rushing and making their stance clear to take advantages and benefits of this potential opportunity in this highly competitive market. There are a lot of new and established grocers putting efforts to make their position strong in the market.
These companies are applying different strategies to gain success just like amazon is using its e-commerce and offers a variation of online grocery services. The current market share for online grocery is quite low about 5.5% as compared with homeware counterparts and online apparel which have shared 10% and 18.9% respectively.
Why Small Market Share?
There are many reasons for the low popularity of online grocery shopping. One reason is the food needs, everyone has their own needs and requirements and purchases often have immediacy attached to them, people prefer to drive and personally wait for the food to get delivered to them and this is one reason of the low popularity.
There are some problems with delivery as well. Hyper-local delivery services can easily be delayed by small events such as traffic and are disposed to human error as well. Most of the times people get the items they didn’t order and don’t belong to them.
According to different survey’s data that the expected shares of online grocery shopping in the U.S to increase almost 133.8 billion in terms of cash value and almost 10 % in percentage by 2020.
It is more of a habit
There are differences between people buying food online and offline, they both have different ways of shopping stuff. Those who prefer to shop offline are less exploratory and more habitual. These people mostly purchase stuff from popular brands or they have fixed brands to buy stuff from. However, it is a lot easier now to explore the catalog and search for new products, only some of them try and buy new products.
The store environment does affect customers buying decisions and also plays a significant role in convincing them to engage and to try new products. The other thing that makes offline shopping preferable for customers is the packaging. The design and new ways to pack the products they offer often encourage customers to buy more stuff from them. These factors affect people who favor brick-and-mortar stores.
All of the above-mentioned differences are important for food brands and grocers as they have to apply different strategies for newly launched products for both offline and online channels.
Summary
• An online grocery store is a type of store that allows consumers to buy grocery online and deliver the products to the doorstep
• Shopping stuff online has many advantages like it saves time, saves transportation and saves energy of the customers
• Online grocery shopping is getting popularity day by day and according to the research the market share by cash will increase to 133.8 billion by 2022
• There are several differences between persons shopping offline and online
• Most of the people who do offline shopping prefer to shop from regular brands or popular brands without exploring for new products that are launched
• On the other hand, it is easy for the people who shop online can explore and buy newly launched products from different stores and markets