Canadians like shopping online, but not for groceries: survey

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TORONTO, ON. (NEWS 1130) – Canadians are happy buying their books and music on the web but aren’t yet embracing online grocery shopping, suggests a recently released report.

According to the results of an online survey of 1,000 Canadians in August, 92 per cent of respondents said they shopped online but only 15 per cent said they had bought groceries on the web.

While almost 40 per cent of online-shopping spending was linked to entertainment purchases, just four per cent was tied to food and groceries.
“With online shopping in general, even in the past with other categories, there had to be an incentive for customers to try it out, to get away from their usual habits, give it a try. And then if there was some benefit they would try it again,” says Suthamie Poologasingham of JC Williams Group Ltd., which looked at the online grocery market in its Canadian E-tail Report. “I think we’re at that stage with grocery and online.”

Canada lags behind the US and UK when it comes to online grocery shopping, added Poologasingham. “Once they understand there is some convenience behind it — if retailers are able to provide those conveniences and the same products they would provide in store — I think we will see more Canadians getting on board.”

While books and clothes ordered online can linger on a porch, in an apartment lobby or a mailbox, food has to be packaged carefully to keep from spoiling or bruising.

To get around that, some retailers including Loblaw and Walmart Canada have adopted a click-and-collect program. The customer orders online and then swings by the store to fetch the order.

Jeremy Pee, Loblaw senior vice-president of e-commerce, claims about 80 per cent of customers who try it once return for a second visit. “We are expecting to see online grocery shopping grow,” explains Poologasingham. “We are seeing from other studies that it is growing, so people are looking at it and trying it out at least once.”

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

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