In July of 2019, a poll conducted by Gallup showed that only fifteen percent of the U.S. had ordered their groceries online a few or more times in the past year. Compare that to forty-eight percent of Americans who’ve bought electronics online or fifty-eight percent of Americans who’ve purchased clothes and you might discern grocery as being one of the last frontiers in E-commerce.
Why is that the case? Why has grocery lagged behind other areas in online retail? Some of the most common answers that consumers have to the question “Why don’t you buy groceries online?” suggest that shopping for groceries in a store is something that they actually like to do. Retailers can remove a delivery or pickup fee to entice customers to shop online, but they can’t (yet) replace the experience of squeezing an avocado to ensure it’s ripeness.
While the same degree of customer resistance was surely present in other retail segments at one point or another (i.e. being able to touch and view jeans in real life was extremely important fifteen years ago), the gap in adoption has clearly grown as a third of clothing and apparel sales are done online compared to a measly six percent in grocery.
Crossing the Chasm, was a phrase coined by Geoffrey Moore in 1991 to describe the jump in technology adoption from one market segment (Early Adopters) to another (Early Majority). This critical phase in the diffusion of innovation is the most important period in demonstrating the long term viability of a new technology. Once a technology makes this jump, momentum builds as the adoption begins to roll downhill. Electronics and Apparel E-comm have already crossed the chasm and we could be witnessing grocery make the leap at this very moment.
Above represents % of Americans who have bought certain types of retail items online in the past year
Experimentation Brings Adoption
For the past month and a half we’ve lived in a foreign world. Interactions, routines, businesses, and communities have completely broken from the norm. Everyday experiences that we took for granted have been stripped away and all we’re left with is the hope that things will soon return to normal.
Through all of this, grocers have played a critical role in providing some element of stability to our daily lives. Stability does not necessarily mean being able to walk into a grocery store to buy a box of cereal. This stability is being able to get the food and essentials in a way that is the safest and most convenient for you and your loved ones. This is why we are seeing more and more people experiment with online grocery at a higher rate than ever.
While it is too early to make any predictions on the long term impact that the Coronavirus will have on the way Americans shop for groceries, there is no denying that some acceleration has occurred on the adoption path. The most common objections to online grocery shopping have immediately taken a back seat to the priority of a person’s well-being. When faced with an option between good health or the exact cut of beef that you want at the meat counter, it’s an easy decision to make.
Decisions like this have forced people to jump into the deep end when it comes to online grocery. If retailers are able to provide a fantastic online experience to these customers who are trying pickup or delivery services for the first time, these customers will realize that their previous fears of shopping online were nothing to be afraid of to begin with. From there, when the world eventually returns to “normal” we will begin to see just how much of these shopping habits are adopted in the long run and whether or not online grocery has truly crossed the chasm.
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Additional References
1) Graphic, Reasons Why Consumers Do Not Buy Online, Deloitte, Digital Commerce in the Supermarket Aisle: Strategies for CPG Brands
2) Crossing the Chasm Graphic, original source from Design for Crossing the Chasm