Consumers prefer convenience over price and choice when ordering groceries online: Survey

Consumers preferred convenience over price and choice while ordering groceries online during the lockdown, a survey conducted by social media and community platform LocalCircles had found.

The survey shows that around 80% of respondents prefer convenience and safety options like doorstep or contactless delivery while 14% said availability and selection. Only 2% said better prices was their main consideration. 

The 5-poll survey received more than 39,000 responses from 220 districts across the country. 

During the lockdown imposed by the government beginning late March, many e-commerce grocery firms stepped up their effort and ensured that people could order groceries without going out. Authorities also ensured that all online grocery delivery service providers were exempted from essential services.

On being asked how often they order groceries online during the lockdown, 31% said they do it once a month, 24% said once a week and only 8% said several times a week. Over one-third of 35% of respondents said they rarely order.

The lockdown has forced people to stay home and many now depend on the likes of Amazon Fresh & Prime, BigBasket, Grofers, and Flipkart for ordering groceries.

While online grocery players have been able to make it easy and convenient for consumers to buy groceries online, some of the respondents in the survey also faced issues such as high prices, poor quality, and delivery time.

As per the survey, 13% of consumers said they faced high prices on these platforms, 18% said they had issues with poor quality, 8% complained about the long time taken to deliver and 18% said that they didn’t have much to choose from. 

Notably, 43% of the respondents did not have concerns and were happy ordering groceries online during the lockdown.

The availability of products during the lockdown continued to be a challenge with only 58% of consumers being able to get what they wanted via the apps in the survey conducted on April 19-20 when compared to the previous week, i.e. April 13-14.

When online grocery shoppers were asked whether e-commerce grocery apps were useful during the lockdown, 52% said yes, 45% responded in the negative and 3% did not have an opinion.

In many parts of India, the online platforms could not deliver groceries because of a lack of manpower or due to restrictions imposed by local or state authorities during the lockdown. And this led customers to try different apps to order what they needed.