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Retailing in India is an unchartered territory. Food and grocery is the most promising area for setting up retail business in India. An understanding of shopper retail format choice behaviour will enable retailers to segment their market and target specific consumer groups with strategies premeditated to meet their retail needs. The purpose of this paper is to make a detailed study on the effect of shoppers' demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions in terms of format choice behaviour in the fast growing Indian food and grocery retailing.

Descriptive research design is adopted applying mall intercept survey method using structured questionnaire for data collection. Both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistical tools like χ², factor analysis and multivariate analysis are used to analyse the data collected from 1,040 food and grocery retail customers from upgraded neighbourhood kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in conjoint cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh in India.

The findings suggest that shoppers' age, gender, occupation, education, monthly household income, family size and distance travelled to store have significant association with retail format choice decisions. The choice decisions are also varied among shoppers' demographic attributes. The findings from shoppers' psychographic dimensions like values, lifestyle factors and shopping orientations resulted in segmentation of food and grocery retail consumers into hedonic, utilitarian, autonomous, conventional and socialization type.

The study has practical implications for food and grocery retailers for better understanding the shopper behaviour in the context of changing consumer demographic and psychographic characteristics in an emerging Indian retail market. The findings may help the retailers to segment and target the food and grocery retail consumers and, as a consequence, to undertake more effective retail marketing strategies for competitive advantage.

Given the absence of published academic literature and empirical findings relating to store format choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing in India, this study may serve as a departure point for future studies in this area of concern. The research is also relevant to retail marketers in terms of format development and reorientation of marketing strategies in the fastest growing Indian retail market.

This observational study set out to investigate the effect of sensory description labels on consumer choice of apples in a grocery retail store.

An independent observation study was conducted in a retail grocery store setting. A total of 1,623 consumers were observed over a four‐day period in four different sessions, each using three apple varieties (JONAGOLD, INGRID MARIE, and ELISE). Marketing strategies differed between the sessions as follows: sort name labelling only, sort name and sensory description labelling, sort name and sensory semantic description labelling, and sort name labelling and allowing consumers to taste the apples before choosing.

Consumer product choice was affected by the sensory description labels. When only the sort name was given on the label, the consumers tended to choose INGRID MARIE, which has a strong sort name. With the addition of sensory description labels, the consumer choice shifted to ELISE, which had been chosen with a low frequency when only sort name was given, but was chosen with a high frequency when sensory description labelling was used.

The study was limited to red apples and one national market.

Practitioners, managers, and marketers may benefit from using proper sensory labelling as a marketing tool for various food products, such as apples, in a grocery retail store.

This study shows the importance and value of sensory description label marketing for food products in grocery retail stores. Little attention has previously been paid to the research area within sensory marketing communication concerning the interplay of sensory perception of food and the formulation of marketing labels, or taste marketing. This paper also addresses the possible interaction between the disciplines of sensory and marketing science.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, and explore the importance of, ethical and socially responsible (ESR) factors in Australian consumers' choices of grocery products and stores.

Following an earlier study in the UK, an initial qualitative investigation, then a survey of grocery shoppers in New South Wales, was conducted. Factor analysis explored the structure of the choice factors for grocery products and stores in “main” and “top‐up” shopping situations. Finally, four multiple regression equations measured the effects of these factors.

This paper finds that, when “top‐up” shopping, ESR consumers are less discriminating than when “main” shopping. The provision of ethically farmed produce has most influence on store choice when “main” shopping, while retailers' fair trading and environmentally responsible policies have the greatest influence when “topping‐up”. The ethical provenance of goods is the most important factor in product choice.

The constructs developed need to be validated internationally.

The two large Australian retail grocers may benefit by developing roles as “choice editors” on behalf of their ESR customers; whilst smaller retailers may gain advantage by concentrating on community‐based, environmentally friendly and fair trading policies. Manufacturers of grocery products may benefit by emphasizing their products' ESR provenance and their organisations' ethical policies.

This is the first study of its kind in Australia. It contributes to the development of an internationally relevant set of ESR shopping choice factors.

Food and grocery, which accounts for around 60% of the overall retail market in India, is the most promising area for launching a retail firm. The objective of this research paper is to conduct a thorough investigation of the impact of customers’ geographic, demographic and psychographic characteristics on the selection of retail store format choice behavior in the quickly growing Indian food and grocery retail industry, also to analyze the mediating role of store image on the store choice behavior.

A descriptive research design is used to collect data using the survey method and a structured questionnaire. The data collected from more than 400 food and grocery retail customers from neighborhood Kirana stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in Karnataka, India, would be analyzed using both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and Structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. SEM techniques are used for validation of the model with independent constructs namely Demographics factors, Socio-Economic factors, Geographic factors, Lifestyle and Shopping Motives, a Mediating variable Store Image, and a dependent variable Store choice behavior. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is used to examine the suggested theoretical framework.

The model is tested to reveal the impact of shoppers’ age, gender, occupation, education, monthly household income, family size, and distance traveled to the store, which all play a role in their retail format choice. Also, the socio economic and life style factors of shoppers influence their purchasing decisions as well; store image partially mediates between customer characteristics and store choice behavior.

The study has practical implications for food and grocery retailer in understanding customer behavior in the context of changing customer demographic and psychographic features in the Indian retailing sector. The findings aid retail merchants, allowing them to develop more successful retail marketing strategies and gain a competitive advantage.

This study could serve as a springboard for future research in this field. Retail marketers will benefit from the findings in terms of format creation and reorientation of marketing strategies in the shortest time.

Elder German grocery shoppers are a growing, heterogeneous, and highly relevant and attractive, but under-researched market segment. In order to understand them and their grocery shopping motivations better and target them efficiently and effectively, the purpose of this paper is to identify dimensions of their shopping motivations and segment them based on these dimensions.

In total, 26 grocery store-choice criteria were identified in a thorough literature review and focus-group interviews with 36 elder German consumers aged 65 and older. In a subsequent survey, the importance of these criteria was rated by 1,288 German shoppers of the same age group. A principal component and cluster analysis were performed to identify dimensions of store-choice criteria and segments of elder German grocery shoppers. Multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of variance and discriminant analysis were used to test for statistically significant differences between the clusters.

Basic quality considerations, shopping experience and social interaction, service and assistance, price consciousness, product orientation, convenient location and quick service and packaging requirements influence the grocery store choice of elder German consumers in decreasing order of variance explained. The cluster analysis revealed indifferent, leisure, convenience, assistance-oriented, no frills, product-oriented and service-oriented elder German shoppers, which differ in their shopping motivations statistically and significantly. These clusters are described and contrasted in detail to derive managerial implications.

This research provides the first store-choice component analysis and cluster analysis for elder German grocery shoppers. This can help food retail to reach this attractive target group more efficiently and effectively and improve the food supply of elder German consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast customer perceptions related to satisfaction with conventional grocery stores as compared to specialty grocery stores. The study examines store attributes of product assortment, price, quality, and service in order to determine which attributes have the greatest impact on store satisfaction for each store format.

A mail survey was sent to a sample of specialty and conventional grocery store customers. The ten state sample was drawn from US households located in postal (ZIP) codes in areas where national specialty stores (e.g. whole foods) were located.

Perception of satisfaction were higher among specialty grocery store customers compared to conventional grocery store customers. For both store formats, store price, product assortment, service and quality positively influenced satisfaction. Stepwise regression indicated that each store attribute contributed differently to store satisfaction for conventional and specialty store formats.

The results demonstrate that price, product assortment, quality, and employee service influence store satisfaction regardless of store type (conventional stores or specialty stores). However, the degree of influence of these attributes varied by store type. The results imply that while specialty store shopper satisfaction characteristics are clearly delineated, conventional store shopper characteristics are more difficult to pinpoint. Research limitations include a sample that is more highly educated and has higher incomes than the average American household.

Despite the growth of new product categories and new industry players, few studies have investigated customer satisfaction within the retail food industry. Comparisons of specialty and conventional food stores are equally scarce.

In the age of “big data,” one of the most important capabilities that differentiates the winners from the losers in the intensely competitive grocery market is how successfully a firm can harness its vast amounts of shopper data to become more shopper-centric. Grocery retailers struggle with how to manage the tremendous amount of data available to them and best leverage their frequent shopper data to derive insights. These data also present an opportunity for academic research on decision-making and evaluation of strategic initiatives. This chapter discusses three case studies that illustrate the various capabilities of frequent shopper data in generating shopper insights. Specifically, using frequent shopper data for millions of shoppers, the three case studies demonstrate how frequent shopper data can be used as an important information asset for understanding differences and similarities among different shopper groups (Case Study 1), as a means to assess the effectiveness of store redesigns/environment changes (Case Study 2), and as a key tool for evaluating program success (Case Study 3). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how successful collaboration between practitioners and academics can be a boon to both business success and academic research.

Although the movement of goods by consumers represents a large proportion of the economic and environmental impact of the distribution chain, this topic has been insufficiently explored in the retailing literature. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of shopping travel-mode choice in the context of grocery shopping.

The paper presents findings from a Swedish national survey of 1,694 respondents that included questions regarding travel-mode choices and consumer characteristics, mobility conditions, shopping behaviours and environmental interests and engagements.

This paper shows how travel modes interrelate and how various consumer characteristics, shopping behaviours, mobility conditions and environmental interests and engagements relate to and affect travel-mode choice in grocery shopping. General travel patterns and distance to store are shown to be the most important factors in explaining the mode of transport for grocery shopping.

This paper presents data from a national representative survey and provides novel analyses of travel-mode choices in grocery shopping and the interrelationships among those choices, in addition to the interrelationship between travel-mode choice and the use of home delivery. This paper contributes to a further understanding of consumer mobility in the context of grocery shopping.

The paper reports the results of a study of food shopping behaviour in Greece. It is concerned with establishing the dimensions underlying shoppers’ evaluations of their regular supermarket store attributes, exploring the existence of shopper segments and subsequently, identifying the segments in terms of shopping behaviour and attitudes to store features. The main research instrument is a survey of adult Greek grocery shoppers in the metropolitan area of the city of Thessaloniki. The empirical results indicate that there are three dimensions that underlie the importance of store features. These are defined respectively as ‘Store design and variety’, ‘Personnel and service’, and ‘Convenient location’. The application of cluster analysis to the dimensions factor scores reveals four clusters. The characteristics of each cluster are described by average factor scores on the dimensions of store features, demographic characteristics, attitudes to store features, store loyalty, and motives for regular store choice.

Focuses on the changing nature of retail competition and the way it affects local consumer choice in the UK grocery sector. Integrates relevant literature on the economic aspects of competition with work on the changing corporate geographies of retailers. Links vertical market power (relative to suppliers) and multiple retailers’ ability to compete horizontally (relative to other retailers) in a given trading locality, and argues that this interaction has fundamentally altered the nature of competition. The increase in retail power that has resulted has served to redefine local consumer choice. Smaller retailers are disadvantaged by this shift because it has directly affected the store and product choices of consumer groups depending on their relative mobility. Argues for empirical work to ground and validate these assertions.