Online grocery shopping

: an exploratory study of consumer decision making processes

Abstract

Online shopping has been known as a rapidly growing business, and although online grocery shopping has not followed these same growth patterns in the past, it is now being recognized for its potential. As such, the focus of previous online shopping research has seldom encompassed this specific retail market, with the existing studies focusing essentially on consumers’ motivations and attitudes, rather than how consumers actually shop for groceries online. Therefore, this dissertation has the objective of uncovering some of the details of consumer decision making processes for this specific online retail market, details which can help further both academic research and managerial knowledge. The general consumer decision making process is characterized by a pre-decisional, a decisional and a post-decisional phase. All of which were addressed in an exploratory fashion, through a mixed methods strategy which combined both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. One of the main results obtained through this study is the complementarity of retail channels - as it was found that online grocery shopping serves essentially for major shopping trips, being complemented with smaller trips to traditional stores. Moreover, some resistance to online grocery shopping, specifically the shopping of fresh produce, was also still found among the Portuguese population. Additionally, based on two of the main consumer shopping orientations which shape online grocery shopping, price-sensitivity and convenience, this study uncovered consumer groups which presented distinguishable shopping strategies. These strategies are in general very focused and rational, and vary essentially based on the shopper’s more prominent shopping orientation. Moreover, all consumer types were found to have general negative responses to online stimuli present during shopping. Thus, this dissertation contributed to the knowledge of consumer decision making processes for online grocery shopping, making wave for new and further researches in this field and contributing to managerial knowledge.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Isabel de Almeida Costa (Supervisor)