Digital behaviors are increasingly making their presence felt in the grocery shopping world, per data from Acosta’s latest “The Why? Behind The Buy” [download page] report. In the Spring 2013 survey, 28% of grocery shoppers indicated they regularly print a coupon from a website before, during or after their grocery shopping trips, up from 24% in the Fall of 2012. More consumers are also signing up to get future emails from a product manufacturer or store (21% vs. 17%), loading coupons onto their shopper cards from a website (19% vs. 14%), and signing up for texts and emails that provide coupons they can print out (17% vs. 13%), among others.
That’s part of an overall trend towards greater use of digital technology to assist with grocery shopping. Between 2012 and 2013, the percentage of respondents regularly using social networking to plan their shopping trip or decide which products to buy grew from 11% to 14%, as did those using a mobile application (from 9% to 11%).
By contrast, traditional vehicles – such as coupons clipped from a newspaper or magazine, store flyers, and coupons from the store flyers – are becoming less regularly used by grocery shoppers.
