Grocery Purchases Research Articles

Exploring Influential Factors on Online Groceries Shopping Purchase Intentions Among Customers in Jabodetabek Area

This study applied a qualitative approach to investigate the underlying influences on consumers’ online grocery shopping from the intention generation phase to intention execution phase in the perspectives of purchase intention and the intention–behaviour gap (IBG). Research data were derived from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 consumers and analyzed using grounded theory. The findings identified factors that influenced intentions and the IBG in the process of consumers’ online grocery shopping. Specifically, these findings reported that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk of COVID-19, social influence, and enjoyable shopping experiences were identified as major drivers for generating consumers’ online purchase intentions. Difficulty in transaction, late delivery, incomplete information, bad packaging, and difficulty with site navigation were factors triggering the gap between online grocery purchase intentions and behaviours These findings will help stakeholders build future policy and suitable strategies to better promote online grocery shopping in the Jabodetabek context.

Changes in the local food‐at‐home environment, supplemental nutrition assistance program participation, and dietary quality: Evidence from FoodAPS

AbstractWe study dietary quality via grocery purchases among US households using the USDA's FoodAPS data. Using data from Nielsen IQ TDLinx, we measure changes in the local food‐at‐home environment over an 8‐year span and identify impacts on the healthy eating index. The results indicate the local food environment better explain food choices and dietary quality for rural households, as compared to urban. Many of our significant findings pertain specifically to supplemental nutrition assistance program participants. Decreases in local supermarket availability is often associated with lower adherence to federal dietary recommendations, and the converse is often true for supercenters.

Online Grocery Shopping in Germany: Assessing the Impact of COVID-19

Online grocery shopping in Germany has shown a strong growth in the past years and is expected to further develop in the future, especially through the influence of COVID-19. The main purpose of this study was to examine six theoretical customer-oriented factors and their influence on consumer online grocery purchase intentions. Additionally, this study compares consumer perceptions before and since the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the health crisis is very recent, the research on its impact on online grocery purchasing behavior is limited. A total of 402 valid questionnaires were collected in Germany. The data were analyzed using the software SPSS IBM 28. The results indicate that perceived risk still has a negative influence on purchase intentions, thus remaining relevant in online grocery shopping. However, the consumers’ perceived risk is considered lower compared to the pre-COVID-19 scenario. Moreover, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived trust, convenience, as well as situational factors were found to have a positive relationship with purchase intention, both before the COVID-19 crisis and since then. The COVID-19 pandemic shows a strong reduction in perceived risk, while the remaining characteristics increase at moderate levels. Online grocery businesses could use the insights of this study to reduce perceived risks as well as successfully communicate the benefits of online shopping to consumers.

A slow road from meat dominance to more sustainable diets: An analysis of purchase preferences among Finnish loyalty-card holders

Achieving a sustainable and healthy diet requires increased replacement of red meat with more sustainable foods. There is a call for novel methodologies to assess the potential of different interventions and policies in enhancing the transition from the current to more sustainable choices. We aimed to characterize consumer clusters with similar preferences in protein sources, to compare the purchase prices of these foods, and to identify ongoing transitions from one protein source to another. Grocery purchase data with individual attributes on 29,437 consenting loyalty card holders were analyzed over 2.3 year period. We designed a sequence analysis to group participants to clusters with similar purchase preferences over the follow-up period and to estimate transition probabilities between preferences. We studied the determinants of prevalent purchase profiles by ordinal logistic models. We identified six participant profiles with similar preferences in four protein sources: red meat, poultry, fish, and plant-based foods. Red meat dominated the purchase preferences and showed the highest persistence over time. The majority (70%) of the participants demonstrated somewhat mixed purchase profiles. A step-by-step transition from red meat towards plant-based food preference seems most likely via poultry and fish. Overall, low income was not a barrier to a more sustainable purchase profile, while price may deter the purchase of fish. The most important resources in choosing more sustainable profiles were education and stage of family life. Societal incentives for sustainable food choices seem most crucial at transition stages of life course and for the less educated. Here, we also demonstrate that grocery purchase data offer a valuable tool for monitoring the progressive transition towards a healthy and sustainable food system.

Aggregate Service Using One Stop Shop and Web Crawler in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing services has become an important paradigm as it is reliable and provides a cost effective way of storing and hosting applications. Cloud storage is growing exponentially and monitor the data in a secure manner. Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software. As long as an electronic device has access to the web, it has access to the data and the software programs to run it. The one-stop shop expanded over time to include business services. The shifted from a wide product offering to capture more of the customer's grocery purchase to one of offering all the complementary products and services to a client in a particular area. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine,that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches.

Healthfulness of Online Grocery Shopping Behaviors: Analyzing Receipt Data From Low-Income Households With Children

ObjectivesOnline grocery services hold potential to reduce physical barriers to equitable healthy food procurement, particularly among low-income families who often live far from groceries stores. During COVID-19, the USDA authorized the use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits online in some retailers across the US. We aimed to evaluate the nutritional quality of online grocery purchases among SNAP-eligible families. MethodsItemized receipt data was analyzed from a larger mixed methods study of online grocery shopping behaviors of SNAP-eligible families in Maryland. Of the 310 participants who completed the survey, 39 submitted grocery receipts. Of those, 19 participants submitted receipts with complete data for nutritional analysis on total amount spent, number of items purchased and units, weight (oz), and % of expenditure on fruits, vegetables, and sugar sweetened beverages (SSB). Nutritional analysis compared purchases of propensity score matched samples of SNAP (n = 14) versus SNAP-eligible non-participant families (n = 5) using a zero-inflated Poisson regression, controlling for sociodemographic factors. Results43% of SNAP participants used SNAP benefits to purchase groceries online. Families spent, on average, 7.8% of their expenditure on SSBs, 5.3% on fruits and 4.5% on vegetables. SNAP participants purchased 61% less fruit by unit (p = 0.043) and 77% less fruit by weight (p = 0.004) compared to non-SNAP. Additionally, SNAP participants purchased 52% less vegetables by unit (p = 0.009), 65% less by weight (p = 0.006) and spent 69% less (p < 0.001) than non-SNAP. Lastly, SNAP participants purchased 247% more SSB by weight (p = 0.002) and spent 434% more on SSB (p = 0.001) than non-SNAP. ConclusionsSNAP participants may be purchasing more SSB and less fruits and vegetables online than SNAP-eligible non-participant. Findings call for future research using more rigorous receipt data sourced from larger, representative samples of SNAP-eligible families to evaluate the health behavior implications of equitable nutrition policies in the digital environment and direct future policy creation to promote equitable healthy food access. Funding SourcesHealthy Eating Research (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).

Encouraging healthier grocery purchases online: Arandomised controlled trial and lessons learned.

Online supermarket platforms present an opportunity for encouraging healthier consumer purchases. A parallel, double-blind randomised controlled trial tested whether promoting healthier products (e.g. lower fat and lower calorie) on the Sainsbury's online supermarket platform would increase purchases of those products. Participants were Nectar loyalty membership scheme cardholders who shopped online with Sainsbury's between 20th September and 10th October 2017. Intervention arm customers saw advertisement banners and recipe ingredient lists containing healthier versions of the products presented in control arm banners and ingredient lists. The primary outcome measure was purchases of healthier products. Additional outcome measures were banner clicks, purchases of standard products, overall purchases and energy (kcal) purchased. Sample sizes were small due to customers navigating the website differently than expected. The intervention encouraged purchases of some promoted healthier products (spaghetti [B=2.10, p<0.001], spaghetti sauce [B=2.06, p<0.001], spaghetti cheese [B=2.45, p=0.001], sour cream [B=2.52, p<0.001], fajita wraps [B=2.10, p<0.001], fajita cheese [B=1.19, p<0.001], bakery aisle products (B=3.05, p=0.003) and cola aisle products [B=0.97, p<0.002]) but not others (spaghetti mince, or products in the yogurt and ice cream aisles). There was little evidence of effects on banner clicks and energy purchased. Small sample sizes may affect the robustness of these findings. We discuss the benefits of collaborating to share expertise and implement a trial in a live commercial environment, alongside key learnings for future collaborative research in similar contexts.

Food purchases in households with and without diabetes based on consumer purchase data

ObjectivesDietary recommendations for individuals with diabetes are easy to provide, but adherence is difficult to monitor. The objective of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in grocery purchases between households with and without diabetes. Study designCohort study. MethodsConsumer purchase data in 2019 was collected from 6662 households donating their supermarket receipts via a receipt collecting service. Of these households, 718 included at least one individual with diabetes. The monetary percentages spent on specific food groups were used to characterize households using all purchases in 2019. A probability index model was used to compare households with diabetes to households without diabetes. ResultsWe included 405,264 shopping trips in 2019 attributed to 6662 households. Both households with and without diabetes spent the highest monetary percentage on sweets (with diabetes: 9.3%, without diabetes: 8.8%), with no statistically significant difference detected. However, compared to households without diabetes, households with diabetes had a significantly higher probability of spending a higher monetary percentage on butter, oil and dressings; non-sugary drinks; processed red meat and ready meals as well as a significantly lower probability of spending a higher monetary percentage on accessory compounds; alcoholic beverages; eggs; grains; rice and pasta, and raw vegetables. ConclusionsHouseholds with diabetes spent a relatively higher monetary value on several unhealthy foods and less on several healthy groceries compared to households without diabetes. There is a need for more diabetes self-management education focused on including more healthy dietary choices in their household grocery purchases.

A click too far from fresh foods: A mixed methods comparison of online and in-store grocery behaviors among low-income households

A recent policy in the U.S. authorized monthly benefits from a nutrition assistance program - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - to be used online to increase grocery access and promote healthy eating. This study examined online grocery attitudes and purchasing behaviors among low-income SNAP-eligible households with young children with and without online grocery experience. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used, including a survey informed by the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and focus groups conducted between November–March 2021. In the quantitative phase, 310 Maryland residents completed an online survey assessing TPB constructs (attitudes, social norms, perceived control), and food purchase frequency online and in-store. Subsequently, 42 participated in the qualitative phase. Differences in TPB constructs and food purchases were compared between families with and without online grocery experience. Online food selection and fees were a common obstacle to online grocery purchasing. Families who had purchased groceries online (57%) had more positive attitudes and perceived fewer barriers to online shopping than those who had not. Self-reported frequency of buying fresh produce (OR = 0.34, p < 0.001), meat and seafood (OR = 0.29, p < 0.001), and sweets (OR = 0.54, p = 0.005) were lower online than in-store. Families discussed mistrust of online hired shoppers and fewer impulse purchases online as reasons for less frequent purchases of produce and sweets, respectively. Successful scale-up of the U.S. policy must address barriers to healthier purchasing behaviors to effectively promote equitable food access, such as decreasing delivery fees and improving the online food selection.

Nudging more sustainable grocery purchases: Behavioural innovations in a supermarket setting

Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in a shift towards more plant-based foods is considered a key component of a healthy and sustainable diet. Recent experimental work suggests that behavioural insights-based interventions in the immediate choice context may create opportunities for sustainable food-behaviour change. Among the many actors and elements of a complex food system, supermarkets are in a unique position as main gatekeepers to curate the interface between supply and demand and steer both in more sustainable directions. Sustainability-oriented retailers can use innovative behavioural tools to promote healthier and climate-friendlier foods (such as vegetables) while meeting the “triple bottom line”. A real-life supermarket trial in Denmark tested if multi-layered nudges can increase the purchase of fruit and vegetables. The intervention led to small increases in sales. These findings showcase the possibility that supermarkets, in principle, have agency and ability to nudge consumers towards more sustainable diets. To meaningfully shift consumers’ consumption patterns, supermarkets need an open sharing of best practices and the use of a sound methodology to better understand and effectively change consumer behaviour. In partnership with stakeholders, supermarkets could play a more active role in fostering a sustainable food transition by employing “nudges for good”.

Sequential consumer choice as multi-cued retrieval.

Whether adding songs to a playlist or groceries during an online shop, how do we decide what to choose next? We develop a model that predicts such open-ended, sequential choices using a process of cued retrieval from long-term memory. Using the past choice to cue subsequent retrievals, this model predicts the sequential purchases and response times of nearly 5 million grocery purchases made by more than 100,000 online shoppers. Products can be associated in different ways, such as by their episodic association or semantic overlap, and we find that consumers query multiple forms of associative knowledge when retrieving options. Attending to certain knowledge sources, as estimated by our model, predicts important retrieval errors, such as the propensity to forget or add unwanted products. Our results demonstrate how basic memory retrieval mechanisms shape choices in real-world, goal-directed tasks.

Changes in household diet: Determinants and predictability

We use grocery purchase data to analyze dietary changes. We show that dietary change is unusual, even in response to significant disease diagnosis or changes in household circumstances. We then identify a small subset of households which show significant dietary changes (either improvements or worsened diet). We use machine learning to predict these households and find dietary concentration is a significant predictor of change. Households tend to change a small subset of food items at a time, suggesting dietary recommendations might be better focused on making smaller, simpler changes rather than broader diet alterations.

Verification of the voice control modification of robot -DOBOT Magician depending to change voice frequency

Voice control is becoming increasingly popular nowadays. Voice control is used, for example, in the car when entering navigation, in smartphones it is possible to search for the desired thing on the Internet using smartphones, or a smart home voice assistant will make grocery purchases if necessary. Is the reliability of voice control close to perfection or does it have its flaws? Continuous improvement of voice control proves that reliability still has unexplored possibilities for improvement. In collaborative robotics, multiword voice commands are more successful. In the longer time it takes to say the whole command, it is easier to identify the voice command and assign the correct task. Modifying the voice frequency also improves the success of the commands. This article examines single-word and multi-word voice commands and verifies modifications to the commands of a collaborative robot depending on the change in voice frequency.

Between Two “Consumer Revolutions”: Groceries and Other Foodstuff Purchases at Lower Canadian Country Stores, 1809–67

An analysis of the account books of five different Lower Canadian country general stores between 1809 and 1867 shows that ordinary households had access to, and purchased, an increasingly wide range of groceries and other foodstuffs over the period. As in Upper Canada, grocery purchases were “routine – part of many families’ culture,” and some commodities may even have been mass consumed. Foodstuffs supplied by global trade networks coexisted with products of domestic manufactures. Foodstuffs consumption also displayed characteristics associated with the “consumer revolution” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as others usually deemed to have been part of the “mass consumption societies” of the twentieth century.

Gustativne metafore i poređenja u romanu Epitaf carskog gurmana Veljka Barbierija

The novel Epitaph of the Imperial Gourmand is one of the first dystopian novels in Croatian literature. It is written in the form of a satirical diary, and the author, using various genres of gastronomic literary tradition, creates an atmosphere of hopelessness, powerlessness and absolute control of the government. The Ministry of Public Order and Morality supervises, prosecutes and bans the purchase of groceries and cooking for a clerk in a paper factory. The clerk, main character, deals the last blow to the authorities by committing suicide by consuming the most delicious poisonous dish prepared by the recipe of a famous Roman chef of similar destiny. In this way, Barbieri sends us a message about the inalienability of freedom of choice, but also about the timelessness, spacelessness and ubiquity of repressive societies. The topic of the paper are gustatory metaphors and comparisons, the mechanisms of their origin and their function in the novel. Metaphors are studied following Lakoff's and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphors. Since metaphors are the basis of comparisons, it was necessary to include them in the research. The focus is on lexical variations of metaphors and comparisons in relation to the standard forms that Barbieri uses as a means of emphasizing pleasure and opposing the (gastronomic) uniformity of the regime at the language level.

Linking a sugar-sweetened beverage tax with fruit and vegetable subsidies: A simulation analysis of the impact on the poor

US individuals, particularly from low-income subpopulations, have very poor diet quality. Policies encouraging shifts from consuming unhealthy food towards healthy food consumption are needed. We simulate the differential impacts of a national sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax and combinations of SSB taxes with fruit and vegetable (FV) subsidies targeted to low-income households on SSB and FV purchases of lower and higher SSB purchasers. We considered a 1-cent-per-ounce SSB tax and 2 FV subsidy rates of 30% and 50% and used longitudinal grocery purchase data for 79,044 urban/semiurban US households from 2010-2014 Nielsen Homescan data. We used demand elasticities for lower and higher SSB purchasers, estimated via longitudinal quantile regression, to simulate policies' differential effects. Higher-SSB-purchasing households made larger reductions (per adult equivalent) in SSB purchases than lower SSB purchasers due to the tax (e.g., 4.4 oz/day at SSB purchase percentile 90 compared with 0.5 oz/day at percentile 25; P < 0.05). Our analyses by household income indicated low-income households would make larger reductions than higher-income households at all SSB purchase levels. Targeted FV subsidies induced similar, but nutritionally insignificant, increases in FV purchases of low-income households, regardless of their SSB purchase levels. Subsidies, however, were effective in mitigating the tax burdens. All low-income households experienced a net financial gain when the tax was combined with a 50% FV subsidy, but net gains were smaller among higher SSB purchasers. Further, low-income households with children gained smaller net financial benefits than households without children and incurred net financial losses under a 30% subsidy rate. SSB taxes can effectively reduce SSB consumption. FV subsidies would increase FV purchases, but nutritionally meaningful increases are limited due to low purchase levels before policy implementation.Expanding taxes beyond SSBs, providing larger FV subsidies, or offering subsidies beyond FVs, particularly for low-income households with children, may be more effective.

Estimating Dietary Intake from Grocery Shopping Data-A Comparative Validation of Relevant Indicators in Switzerland.

In light of the globally increasing prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases, new scalable and non-invasive dietary monitoring techniques are urgently needed. Automatically collected digital receipts from loyalty cards hereby promise to serve as an objective and automatically traceable digital marker for individual food choice behavior and do not require users to manually log individual meal items. With the introduction of the General Data Privacy Regulation in the European Union, millions of consumers gained the right to access their shopping data in a machine-readable form, representing a historic chance to leverage shopping data for scalable monitoring of food choices. Multiple quantitative indicators for evaluating the nutritional quality of food shopping have been suggested, but so far, no comparison has validated the potential of these alternative indicators within a comparative setting. This manuscript thus represents the first study to compare the calibration capacity and to validate the discrimination potential of previously suggested food shopping quality indicators for the nutritional quality of shopped groceries, including the Food Standards Agency Nutrient Profiling System Dietary Index (FSA-NPS DI), Grocery Purchase Quality Index-2016 (GPQI), Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), Healthy Trolley Index (HETI) and Healthy Purchase Index (HPI), checking if any of them performs differently from the others. The hypothesis is that some food shopping quality indicators outperform the others in calibrating and discriminating individual actual dietary intake. To assess the indicators’ potentials, 89 eligible participants completed a validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and donated their digital receipts from the loyalty card programs of the two leading Swiss grocery retailers, which represent 70% of the national grocery market. Compared to absolute food and nutrient intake, correlations between density-based relative food and nutrient intake and food shopping data are stronger. The FSA-NPS DI has the best calibration and discrimination performance in classifying participants’ consumption of nutrients and food groups, and seems to be a superior indicator to estimate nutritional quality of a user’s diet based on digital receipts from grocery shopping in Switzerland.

Consumer sophistication as an enhancer of innovation in the food industry: measurement development and validation

PurposeRecently, the role of consumers in firms' innovation processes has increased. Prior literature asserts that qualitative aspects of consumers serve as crucial factors shaping the even competitiveness of a specific industry. This study focuses on measuring home demand conditions that enhance local firms' innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe present study describes the development of a 12-item measure to assess consumer sophistication in the food industry. The items assess the general knowledge, experience, skills and abilities needed to purchase a specific food category. A second-order construct with three distinct first-order constructs emerged, which were termed opinion formulation, sensitivity and exposure with variety. The reliability and validity of the scale were assessed with pilot survey data using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The developed measure was tested to investigate its effect on individuals' grocery buying behaviors using grocery receipt panel data from 723 consumers.FindingsThe results indicate that consumer sophistication has a positive effect on new and the variety of grocery purchases. The more sophisticated a consumer is, the more they buy new and a variety of products. The newly developed consumer sophistication measure has a variety of potential applications to predict consumers' variety-seeking and new product purchase behavior.Originality/valueThis study is the first to develop a measure for assessing demand quality, namely, consumer sophistication of a specific food product. This approach may offer insights to practitioners regarding the relevant consumer sophistication levels to target when launching a new product or service in the food industry.

Consumer preferences for grocery purchasing during the COVID-19 pandemic: a quantile regression approach

PurposeThe objective is to determine if consumer preferences for grocery purchasing are impacted by the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and whether these preferences differ by demographic and psychographic characteristics.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct an online discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 900 U.S. consumers to assess grocery shopping preferences under various scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. decreasing, constant and increasing cases). The attribute of interest is the purchasing method (i.e. in-store purchase, in-store pickup, curbside pickup and home delivery) with minimum order requirements, time windows and fees as secondary attributes. Heterogeneity in individual-level willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for the main attribute is analyzed by means of mixed logit and quantile regression techniques.FindingsThe mixed logit model reveals heterogeneity in WTP estimates for grocery purchasing methods across participants. According to estimates from quantile regressions, the heterogeneity is partly explained by the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the home delivery purchasing method is less preferred when the number of cases is decreasing. The results also show that consumer preferences for grocery shopping methods are affected more by psychographic characteristics than demographic characteristics. Consumers who comply with COVID-19 directives (e.g. wear face coverings) have stronger preferences for curbside pickup and home delivery, particularly at the tails of the WTP distributions.Originality/valueAlthough there is much data on food consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic at the aggregate level, there are few analyses of grocery shopping preferences at the individual level. The study represents a first attempt to relate individuals' demographic and psychographic characteristics to their grocery shopping preferences during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus yielding numerous recommendations in terms of consumer segmentation.

The Buy-Online-Pick-Up-in-Store Retailing Model: Optimization Strategies for In-Store Picking and Packing

Online shopping is growing fast due to the increasingly widespread use of digital services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the desire for contactless shopping has further changed consumer behavior and accelerated the acceptance of online grocery purchases. Consequently, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are developing omnichannel solutions such as click-and-collect services to fulfill the increasing demand. In this work, we consider the Buy-Online-Pick-up-in-Store concept, in which online orders are collected by employees of the conventional stores. As labor is a major cost driver, we apply and discuss different optimizing strategies in the picking and packing process based on real-world data from a German retailer. With comparison of different methods, we estimate the improvements in efficiency in terms of time spent during the picking process. Additionally, the time spent on the packing process can be further decreased by applying a mathematical model that guides the employees on how to organize the articles in different shopping bags during the picking process. In general, we put forward effective strategies for the Buy-Online-Pick-up-in-Store paradigm that can be easily implemented by stores with different topologies.