OREANDA-NEWS. September 24, 2015. “Comparison shopping may be more prevalent for big-ticket items like electronics and appliances, but it’s increasingly taking hold for groceries and other consumable goods,” says Steven Skinner. “Comparison shopping among food/CPG companies is growing, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association. A very large percentage of our population is needing to know exactly what they can spend per week for food. Many of these consumers are comparison shopping with food/CPG companies before they leave home. They access coupons online, identify the best place to shop, then typically limit their physical stops to only one or two brick-and-mortar retailers or online retailers,” he adds.

Skinner says that food and other CPG retailers can enhance convenience through judicious offering of apps. These include price-comparison apps like ShopSavvy and Price Scanner, which allow shoppers to scan bar codes and compare prices across a number of retailers; Food Origin, which reveals the provenance of a food item with a bar code scan; and a variety of apps and websites, including one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that provide guides to farmers markets and other sources of organic/healthier food.

Skinner says that home delivery is another important aspect of convenience in grocery retailing, and that retailers are overcoming the biggest obstacle: trust. “Now consumers are trusting, more than ever, people to recognize quality, pick their produce and deliver it to them via a home delivery service,” he says. “The ability to provide rich data, imagery of products, product origin details, and competitive comparisons online or through apps is making it easier for consumers to trust the online/home delivery experience.”

Citing Cognizant’s sixth annual Shopper Experience Study, Retail Leader writes: “Personal technology is shaping shopper expectations to an unprecedented degree, and retailers must adapt if they want to take advantage. The Shopper Experience Study, a survey of more than 5,000 North American shoppers, centered on certain consumer desires and concerns as they relate to technology.” It adds, “The Cognizant survey asked shoppers why they might choose a retailer other than the lowest-priced one. The most common reason was convenience, at 48 percent, followed by loyalty programs (32 percent) and return policy (31 percent).”

The survey, the report notes, specifically looked at click-and-collect, referred to as Buy Online, Pick-up In-Store (BOPIS). It points out that a Cognizant report on the study warns, “BOPIS is both a benefit to shoppers and a driver of in-store sales, but it is hard to execute and easy to create service failures.”