Online Grocery Shoppers According to Their Typical Shopping Style: A Cluster Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much research has focused on consumer adoption of online grocery shopping (OGS), with less attention paid to consumers’ decision-making styles (CDMS) in OGS. Prior research in other retail domains suggests that CDMS is an effective way to identify relevant consumer segments, thereby enabling retailers to differentiate their service offering and marketing efforts to different target groups. This study aims to segment online grocery shoppers based on CDMS by conducting a survey and cluster analysis with Finnish online grocery shoppers (n = 426). The study identifies three segments; Quality-oriented, Price-oriented, and Novelty-oriented. The segments were further specified by comparing their demographics, shopping characteristics and OGS behavior. The results indicate that the Novelty-oriented are the most active and loyal group of online shoppers, who offer potential for a variety of online grocers. They are the youngest, busiest, and most likely to work a full-time job and have children. The other two clusters also have clear profiles which grocers are wise to tailor their offering to. Overall, the results show that using CDMS for segmentation is a reasonable way to better understand characteristics and behaviors of online grocery shoppers, thereby helping retailers to target them more effectively.