Enticing Today’s Grocery Shoppers Is a Mix of the Old and New Food Marketing Institute (FMI) published a comparison of the results of its surveys from 1982 through 2019 of the top attributes that attract shoppers to a supermarket – and interestingly, they haven’t changed. The top six (in no particular order) are high-quality fruits, vegetables and meat; low prices; a clean, neat store; great product selection and variety; courteous friendly employees; and a fast checkout experience. New attributes are entering the list, however, such as self- checkout, online shopping services, organic products, nutritional and health information available for shoppers and recycling. Many, if not most, of these didn’t exist as choices during 1982.

Grocery Shopping Continues to Be a Major Daily Task According to Valassis’ 2K19 Coupon Intelligence Report, 42% of all grocery shoppers said “I plan my shopping and make purchases at various times throughout the day to fit into my busy schedule,” compared to 69% of parents and 74% of Millennial parents. Despite their widespread use of the digital channel, larger percentages of Millennial parents (70% or more) look at and use paper and printed coupons and store circulars than all shoppers, Millennials and parents. Millennial parents also look at online circulars, 70%; search for coupons online, 68%; and load e-coupons onto a loyalty/frequent shopper card, 67%, at higher rates than other grocery shoppers, but less than paper and printed coupons and store circulars.

Mom Is Still the Primary Grocery Shopper in the Family Being a mother today is challenging (as it always has been), as the latest data (2017) reveals 41% of mothers were “co-breadwinners” for their families and 23.2% were the sole breadwinner. The Valassis study found 52% of moms purchase all or most of their groceries in-store (just 27% of dads), 79% said the lowest prices are most important to them when choosing a store and one-third want to save time while grocery shopping. Technology is helping mothers, as 21% order groceries online for store pick-up, 21% order groceries online for home delivery, 18% order online from Peapod, AmazonFresh, etc.; and 28% use a smartphone app to scan barcodes while shopping.

Younger Adults’ Grocery Shopping Habits Recent IRI research found younger Millennials (born after 1990) are spending more for groceries than older Millennials who, likely because of starting families, are more value-conscious, buying private labels and downloading more online coupons. Older Millennials and Gen Xers are now spending more in the rapidly growing specialty foods category than Baby Boomers who were the top spenders – and specialty food consumers spend an average of 23% more/week. Although the oldest Gen Z members (18–22) are just a small percentage of the entire generation and many haven’t started families, 30% said they were their household’s only or primary grocery shopper, according to a 2019 Field Agent study.

The Meat Department Is Still #1 As briefly mentioned on page 1 of the Profiler, the meat department is a major attractor of grocery shoppers, in fact, its quality and selection as well as that of the produce department make them the top attractors, having displaced price as first. The meat department generates the most supermarket sales, or a total of $67 billion during 2018, which almost doubled the spending for an average shopping basket from $45 to $87. Although 86% of consumers described themselves as a meat eater, according to research from 210 Analytics, 10% are categorized as flexitarians, or general vegetarians who eat some meat. They are most likely to be interested in plant- based alternatives.

Consumers Can’t Shop for Groceries Without Coupons According to the Valassis study, 92% of consumers said they have ever used a coupon during 2019, a slight decline from 94% in the 2018 study, while 19% said they always use them, and 26% very often. Among Millennials, those percentages are even larger, with 94% saying they have ever used them during 2019, 30% always and 23% very often. 50% of consumers said they preferred mailed coupons, 44% from a newspaper’s coupon book, 42% paperless discounts to download to their shopper/loyalty card, 38% paperless discounts on their smartphone and 34% print coupons from the Internet.

Advertising Strategies Based on the table of information from Valassis on page 1 of the Profiler, TV is not only the best ad medium to build a grocery store’s brand, but also the most efficient medium to reach the Baby Boomers who are more likely to be in- store shoppers. With most mothers shopping for groceries in-store, grocers’ ad messages must not only emphasize low prices, but also promote how they manage and organize their stores to help mothers save time when shopping, which is important to one-third of them. To attract a maximum number of older Millennials and Gen Xers, local and regional groceries should consider expanding their specialty food offerings and allocate some portion of their ad budgets and placements to promote these attractive items.

New Media Strategies Grocery stores may want to create a feedback checklist of customer-attraction attributes on page 1 of the Profiler as a Website and/or social media survey and post it monthly, asking customers to indicate if they experienced these attributes during their shopping. Local and regional groceries can use social media content to grab a larger share of all age groups, with posts that both feature items at special prices and provide recipes and, more importantly, short videos about how to prepare and cook them. A digital circular is just as important as a printed one, but simply putting the artwork of the printed version on the grocer’s Website or social media is insufficient. The contents of the digital circular should be separated and become individual social media posts.