When it comes to executing on in-house eCommerce channels, PYMNTS Intelligence reveals, grocers are pulling it off, despite ongoing skepticism in the industry.
The new PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Online Features Driving Consumers to Shop With Brands, Retailers or Marketplaces,” created in collaboration with Adobe, drew from a study of more than 3,500 U.S. consumers to understand their habits and decisions in regard to online shopping.
The results revealed that, on the whole, consumers are satisfied with grocers’ apps. The study found that 78% of consumers who had used a retailer’s website or mobile app to purchase groceries in the previous 30 days reported that they were very or extremely satisfied with their purchase.
This finding bucks the perception that online grocery is too complex for players in the space to provide consumers with a positive user experience.
In September, for instance, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia + Technology Conference that consumers feel that grocery delivery is “worse than the physical experience of buying your own” products in stores, adding that out-of-stocks and insufficient replacements hamper the experience and observing that “there is still a long ways to go.”
Some grocers, too, remain skeptical about digital’s ability to meet consumers’ needs. Take Trader Joe’s, a grocery chain with more than 500 locations that has kept the in-store journey fairly traditional while eschewing eCommerce channels and in-store digital technologies such as self-checkout.
“It’s that experience of being inside the four walls of Trader Joe’s that makes Trader Joe’s what it is,” Trader Joe’s Vice President of Marketing Tara Miller explained on the grocer’s podcast. “That experience would not be the same if you were trying to order something from a website that just showed you the products you already know about.”