How Will Grocery Shopping Look Tomorrow?

Consumers no longer have to scan ten aisles of products at the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner or to restock the cupboards—however for grocery retailers, that is both a blessing and a curse.

While talking about the future of grocery business, burning topics include how stores will change, how the shopping experience might be different, how consumers’ purchasing habits will evolve, and how the grocery business could adapt and innovate.

How Grocery Retail is Shifting to Digital as Customers Demand Online Presence

While many aspects of everyday life are moving online, and customers are demanding online options from their favorite brands, grocery is shifting to digital as well. Grocers must find profitable ways to both improve the in-store experience and enhance their online presence.

Today’s consumers are looking for more convenient ways to research and buy products, and their expectations are sky-high. They want to be able to shop online from retailers that they know and trust, including their grocers.

Retailers, on the other hand, are left wondering how to keep up with the accelerating demand for online access. That is not their principal concern though: the quality of the online experience must also be of the highest quality or the retailer will lose its customers to more proficient online competitors.

As consumer values continue to develop beyond price and convenience, grocers have raced to meet an increasingly nuanced desire for healthy, environmentally sustainable and ethically created food. But as retailers invest in innovations for the consumer of today, questions remain about the food market of tomorrow.

According to a recent report, online grocery shopping could grow five-fold over the next decade, with American consumers spending upwards of $100 billion on groceries and food-at-home items by 2025 (holding 20 percent of the U.S. market).

In Digital Grocery Shopping Experience is Everything

As consumers seek a more hands-on understanding of the food they consume, grocery stores will use new technology to bring an experience to the part of the grocery store where there wasn’t one — in particular, the product section.

Consumers will continue to trend to informed consumption. In other words, eaters desire to know how their choices impact topics such as climate change and other forms of environmental degradation. Tomorrow’s consumers will take a more active role in what they eat and know more about how food impacts their bodies.

One of the most defining characteristics of tomorrow’s grocery store is already revolutionizing today’s industry: unique and complex distribution.

Though the brick-and-mortar retail stores aren’t going away, the more convenient shopping options and desire for omni-channel grocery experiences will drive the development of drone, robot and human courier delivery systems that cater to consumer preferences.

Today’s market is centralized. There is a physical market that you go to, where you shop at the grocery store’s terms. Not long from now, that model is going to shatter into a bunch of little pieces.

Cornfield & Partners can help you with marketing opportunities concerning the food industry and grocery retailing. To find out more about potential business opportunities, contact info@cornfieldpartners.com or you can call us at +44 (0) 20 7692 0873.

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