Study: Shoppers Venture to Multiple Outlets on Food Buying Trips

Consumers are veering off the well-traveled traditional route and branching out into new shopping patterns, according to findings from a Hartman Group study of the purchase decision-making and shopping habits of America’s consumers.

“The days of shopping trips to one store just to fill the pantry are long gone,” said Laurie Demeritt, The Hartman Group’s president and COO. “For today’s consumers, shopping is very much in constant motion; it’s a virtual 24-hour, seven-day-a-week activity. The consumer is now in total control of the shopping process, not the manufacturer or the retailer.”

With perhaps more product and brand choice and channel options than any time in history, and combined with the effects of a lingering economic recession, America’s shoppers are faced with tough decisions on a daily basis. To uncover how and where consumers decide to shop, The Hartman Group’s Shopping Topography unveils a new path to purchase model that accurately captures the current fusion of shopping modes, information sources and planning that is currently occurring in the marketplace. According to the report, purchases are triggered throughout three stages of Inform, Purchase and Consume.

“Consumers claim that they still go on regular stock-up trips to grocery, club and mass discount stores,” said Demeritt. “But during the week, stock-up trips need to be supplemented with fill-in trips to a variety of different channels, depending on a variety of factors, such as needs, occasions, forgetfulness or immediate consumption like hunger and thirst. Consequently, consumers shop several stores in one day.”

The top channel for the stock-up trip is Club (50 percent), pushing the traditional grocery store into second place (47 percent). The Drug (29 percent) and Dollar (23 percent) channels are taking a bite out of the traditional food and beverage channels for stock-up and fill-in shopping trips (Dollar, 23 percent; Drug, 21 percent). The Drug channel is the top choice for immediate consumption shopping trips (24 percent).

The Hartman Group’s Shopping Topography integrated qualitative ethnographies from two U.S. markets with a quantitative online survey of 1,900 U.S. consumers 18-70. Shopping Topography looks at the wider contexts of how and why consumers shop by taking a holistic approach to behaviors, expectations and experiences.

To learn more about how America’s consumers shop, download the Shopping Topography executive summary: www.hartman-group.com/publications/reports/shopping-topography.