Go Online: Get Your Grocery Needs Met Easily!

Online retailing in India is slowly taking off - and is giving the people the extra bit of possibilities, and of course, comfort, that they were earlier missing due to various factors (blame it on the hectic lifestyle, traffic and a host of other personal/professional commitments eating up the time designated for shopping).

With grocery websites coming up, almost everything is available online nowadays. It’s not hard to find an online grocery shop that caters your area! And being so, your favourite couch and that mobile phone or laptop is literally your grocery shop that you can access at any hour of the day.

What are the advantages you have with online shopping?

1. A big saving on the three T’s

• Time : You can more time with your family or continue with your other works

• Travel: Don’t have to run from one shop to another in search for your preferred brands or to check on the prices for the cheapest store and save on transportation costs and parking.

• Traffic: You avoid travelling in the ever crowded roads and lanes in whichever place you are.

2. Comfort: You can shop from anywhere at any time convenient to you. You also do not have the pressure of running to the store before the closing time. These online retailers will deliver the product at your doorstep at a time which you can choose from their delivery slot options.

3. Safety: You avoid the problem of carrying cash on you and of losing your shopping bags on your way back.

4. Impulse Buying: When you shop online you tend to control your desire for some unwanted item. But when you are shopping at a physical grocery store, you are sure to get tempted – largely due to the cold sales-pitch or the possibility of trying out a tangible product available before your hands.

Impulse purchasing is a weakness that majority among us have. It has put many families in debt traps with huge credit card bills. Unlike the sites that feature a large variety of commodities across different verticals, niche sites that deal in specific products – like an online grocery store, for example – only presents a very specific set of items the alternative of which one has had, in all probability, bought.

This, thereby, answers the chances of impulse buying on grocery websites.

A deeper look at impulse buying

Meaning: It is a spontaneous act. The consumer is not in need of the product and has not budgeted for it but due to lure of price and the desire to try out a possibility goes ahead with the purchase. The action is mainly an emotional reaction.

What causes the action?

• Shop layout and the sales-pitch: Almost all brick-and-mortar (conventional) shop owners and multivariate product dealers take advantage of the human behaviour and display all the products in a way to catch the customer’s attention. Candy’s and other food items are placed at the kid’s eye level. Is there any way you can say no to your kids?

• Your negative mood: Emotions like anger or sadness leaves you frustrated. This particular state of being has been found to impel many to go out for shopping to get over the mood. Impulse buying tends to be more evident in such cases

• Indulgent friends: You run into a couple of friends who had just picked up a few cosmetics. You too will just show you are no lesser in status.

• Tangible offers and deals: This route is taken even by online stores, like their conventional counterparts - and you land up blocking a lot of your money buying unwanted products.

There are many more such reasons that cause impulse buying among all of us.

Subscribers of the services of online grocery stores, because of their participation in a very niche product range and type, are not peppered with too many options of ‘related products’ from other verticals and thus stay safe from buying associated items impulsively.