Understanding how online shopping changes the way in which customers use physical stores

A grocery retailer wanted to understand how online shopping was changing the way in which consumers used their physical stores.

Our Solution

• From the retailer’s customers we created three segments: those who shopped online for grocery regularly, those who shopped online occasionally, and those who did not shop online at all.
• We used a diary keeping exercise to understand how and when these different groups shopped for groceries, what they spent and where they visited.
• We undertook accompanied shops with a sample of consumers from each group to understand their in-store behaviours.
• We analysed and compared the data from the different groups to detect and identify differences in store behaviour across factors like spend, categories visited, categories bought, routes taken around the store, and so forth.
• We recommended how store layout should be changed to maximize sales to all groups, but with a particular focus on online shoppers who were less inclined to visit all parts of the store.

Outcome

Our client used the research to optimize store layout and saw sales and basket size increase as a result.