Shopper survey: How cost wins over convenience

In the tight battle of shopper priorities, these days, cost is king over convenience.

That’s one finding in a survey of more than 1,000 shoppers conducted in the third quarter of 2022 by stor.ai, a digital commerce service provider.

While it’s no shocker a majority of shoppers are more price-conscious than they were a year ago, they still want the convenience and digital ease they found during the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s quite a close, somewhat confusing, battle: 33% of shoppers are now thinking twice before ordering groceries online because of the cost of delivery surcharges and added fees, but 29% are less likely to drive to stores because of high gas costs.

“The paradigm shift in grocery shopping in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when massive numbers of shoppers embraced the ease and convenience of shopping online, has given way to a new era in which cost is king, and shoppers now feeling the pinch are under greater pressure to find the best-value option,” stor.ai CEO Mendel Gniwisch said in the report. “People still appreciate the ease and convenience of digital commerce, but when budgets are tight, they aren’t always willing to pay a premium fee for online services.”

This is putting a lot of pressure on retailers to make the contactless and digital shopping methods more cost-effective on the retailer side, to wring out more profit.

Value and personalized offers are what consumers want.

And one way shoppers are finding more value is by switching to less expensive brands — often private labels, or store brands, the survey showed.

About 54% of respondents said they are now buying cheaper brands of the same product when shopping for groceries.

And more than one-fifth of shoppers are using coupons more to reduce grocery expenses.