Online grocery shopping has existed since Covid 19 and has been very helpful, relevant and convenient. As social distancing is becoming the new normal online grocery shopping has led to an increased manifold. Earlier, people were quite fond of visiting a grocery store. Every time they needed something. For many, it became a hobby or a habit to move out whenever in need of any groceries such as orange juice, veggies, or meat, and in addition to it, several people enjoy grocery shopping offline alone or with their loved ones.

Many people now rely entirely on online grocery shopping sites for their needs. However, in earlier times, maximum working people in metro cities preferred shopping in their neighborhood grocery stores after office hours.

The battle of offline versus online grocery shopping has become a never-ending affair. Still, online shopping has become a priority for many people and has moved forward in several ways.

Let us now acknowledge the major factors that affect the offline and online shopping behavior of customers –

• Emotions and personal touch – a completely different shopping experience is offered by the brick-and-mortar stores compared to the online shopping stores. A personal touch and emotions are involved when you shop for groceries like coconut water or fresh lime juice, from a neighborhood supermarket. However, you get freedom of choice while shopping from an online grocery store.

• Risk – whenever an individual orders from an online grocery shop, there lies a concern in the corner of the mind about the quality and the timely delivery of the groceries ordered. For instance, the blueberry you ordered online might be delivered to you in a stale condition. However, a customer buying from offline stores receives their products as soon as they pay for them, which results in quick gratification. Hence, people not prone to online shopping still prefer offline shopping.

• Choices and convenience – when discussing convenience, the online shopping experience is comparatively better than offline shopping. With the comfort of our home, we can buy any product or for interest and choose from various options instead of moving out of our houses and visiting a shop physically.

Moreover, without a seamless online payment process, placing an order and paying for it within a minute is extremely efficient. And then get the groceries delivered to our doorstep within no time. In addition, without dealing with the distributors and dealers, we directly get access to several choices and varieties of different kinds of groceries. For instance, during the summer season, we get to enjoy different varieties of mango, which might be available to you online in the best quality. The amount of types that are offered by online shopping is very hard to get in offline stores.

• Experiences and anxiety – People’s anxiety about exploring different sites and experimenting with them is also crucial. The technologically illiterate people prefer online shopping for almost every commodity. It depends on whether a person goes through a bad or a good experience while shopping online, which affects their mentality and dictates their future preferences regarding online grocery shopping.

Depending on the customer’s perception, whether they trust a specific website to order groceries or randomly order groceries from any side can be monitored. This is why several big companies invest unlimited resources to create a good customer shopping experience.

• Income- Income is another major factor that affects the decision of a person to shop offline or online. People with lower income and limited funds prefer offline shopping as it helps them to get groceries without any delivery fee or to order with a minimum cart value. However, people with higher income order all their groceries from online grocery stores as budget is not an issue for them, and they do not worry about paying delivery fees, handling charges or ordering limited groceries.

• Pricing – one of the biggest advantages received by online retail or else they do not have the burden to bear the expenses like electricity bills, store friends and so on. Hence they gradually decrease the price of the groceries and then offer them to the customers as compared to offline shopping, which is one of the best tactics for driving traffic to word their Online grocery store since the market is highly price competitive.

• Offers & discounts- Apart from offering groceries at a lesser price, almost every online grocery shopping app also offers several discounts, rewards and coupons to save extra money on purchases. This results in giving additional savings to customers while buying groceries online. However, discounts and offline stores are only offered during stock clearance.

The battle between online and offline grocery shopping is a never-ending topic. People go for one that suits their needs, requirements & budget the best. However, online grocery shopping has been moving ahead each day with better & convenient features & offers for their customers.