Grocers’ Digital Shoppers Seek out Physical Touch Points

Consumers may be looking for options to purchase groceries online, but PYMTNS data reveal that even digital shoppers want physical points of contact to interact with their merchants in the real world.

Specifically, research from PYMNTS’ study “Satisfaction in the Age of eCommerce: How Trust Helps Online Merchants Build Customer Loyalty,” created in collaboration with eCommerce fraud management platform Riskified, revealed that 43% of shoppers said it is important to have a physical location for service and returns when purchasing groceries digitally. Additionally, 15% of those customers said this is the single most important feature an online grocer can offer.

Read more: Merchants Risk Losing 40% of Online Retail, Grocery Customers Over Trust

eGrocery customers are dramatically more likely than other kinds of online shoppers to seek out these physical touch points. The report, which drew from a survey of more than 2,100 adults earlier this year, found that only 23% of customers cited physical locations for service and returns as an important feature when shopping with non-grocery online retailers.

For brick-and-mortar grocers that also operate a digital business, meeting this need is simple. They need only direct online customers to their stores. For eGrocers that only exist online, offering physical points of contact requires additional steps, and many currently offer no such touch points.

Additionally, satisfying these expectations is only becoming more important for grocers as online grocery grows. Adoption is rising mid-single digits by the month, according to data from PYMNTS’ April study, “ConnectedEconomy™ Monthly Report: 3 Ways Consumers Are Dealing With Inflation.” The report, which drew from a March survey of more than 2,800 adults, found that 31.6% of consumers reported ordering groceries online that month, up 4.9% from February.

See more: Online Grocery Adoption Rises 5% in March, PYMNTS Data Reveal

In an interview with PYMNTS, Kevin Price, senior consultant at multinational logistics automation company Swisslog, predicted that digital channels will come to occupy as great a share of the total grocery industry as brick-and-mortar by the early 2030s.

“eGrocery at the moment is very much the baby brother or sister, and I think that we will rapidly move towards a point of parity,” he said. “People are talking [about eGrocery accounting for] 50% [of all grocery] in 10 years’ time.”

Read more: Grocers Grapple With the Economics of Smaller, More Frequent Digital Orders

Grocers that do not meet these consumers’ digital and physical expectations risk sending their customers running right into the arms of competitors. “The Satisfaction in the Age of eCommerce” study found that two-thirds of customers who have been purchasing grocery items online from a given merchant for less than a year are “slightly or not at all trusting” of their eGrocer.

If merchants do not invest in building trust, giving consumers the features that they need to feel confident in their commerce experiences such as physical touch points, they could lose these mistrustful customers.

See more: eGrocers Risk Losing New Customers to Lack of Trust