Grocery Shopping Online: Digital Circulars, Facebook Convince Consumers To Buy

G/O Dig­i­tal report offers in-depth look at con­sumer gro­cery shop­ping and behav­ior.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Every­one shops for gro­ceries. It’s unique as a mar­ket in that the tar­get mar­ket encom­pass­es peo­ple from all kinds of demo­graph­ics and social stra­ta. It also remains as one of the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty mar­kets that dig­i­tal has not man­aged to sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt. G/O Dig­i­tal’s ‘CPG Mar­ket­ing Rein­vent­ed’ Report explores how dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives are mak­ing an impact on how con­sumers are shop­ping for gro­ceries.


Once upon a time, gro­cery incen­tives were entire­ly the realm of mag­a­zines, cir­cu­lars, and coupon clip­pers. But now brands are upping their dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. Today, you’re just as like­ly to see shop­pers swip­ing and scan­ning prod­ucts and coupons on their smart­phones as you are to see paper coupons hand­ed over at the check­out.

It’s meant that brands are hav­ing to revis­it their online/offline mar­ket­ing efforts with a degree of inno­va­tion. Recent­ly, we’ve seen brands refresh coupon and dis­count offer­ings, via dig­i­tal cir­cu­lars, and per­son­al­ized adver­tis­ing on social media.

sur­vey by G/O Dig­i­tal of 1,000 U.S. moms and dads inter­est­ed in gro­cery shop­ping has found that 32 per­cent of moms and 24 per­cent of dads cit­ed dig­i­tal cir­cu­lars as the “num­ber one type of adver­tis­ing to per­suade them to make an in-store pur­chase,” well above the equiv­a­lent fig­ures for direct mail, social media, mobile, and TV adver­tis­ing.

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The study also indi­cat­ed that shop­pers have a strong response to per­son­alised adver­tis­ing, with 79 per­cent of moms, and 60 per­cent of dads say­ing that they were more like­ly to pur­chase a gro­cery item at their local super­mar­ket as a result of per­son­alised adver­tis­ing on a dig­i­tal cir­cu­lar. Accord­ing to the study, these kinds of adver­tise­ments are so pow­er­ful because they “weave pro­mo­tions and deals into gro­cery shop­pers’ exist­ing behav­iours — rather than dis­rupt­ing them,” and they do this to full­fil dif­fer­ent stages of the buy­er jour­ney.

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Facebook: The Most Valuable Social Platform For Grocery Shoppers

One of the more sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tions of the report: Face­book was by far the most valu­able social media plat­form in the CPG indus­try. Over half, 55 per­cent of moms, and 47 per­cents of dads, chose Face­book as the most use­ful social media chan­nel to engage with gro­cery brands. Twit­ter, on the oth­er hand, had only 5 per­cent of moms and 7 per­cent of dads find­ing it use­ful as an incen­tive to pur­chase prod­ucts.

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12 Key Findings About Digital Shopper Behavior

1) Google search ads initiate consideration for CPG brands

The search giant takes the lead as the first chan­nel both moms (64 per­cent) and dads (67 per­cent) use before vis­it­ing a food/beverage brand’s web­site, mobile site, app or their local super­mar­ket.

2) CPG Brand Success Hinges on Digitized Coupon Clipping

Near­ly half of moms (45 per­cent) and dads (40 per­cent) report­ed they most want the abil­i­ty to clip and add deals (like coupons) dig­i­tal­ly to their loy­al­ty cards.

3) Deal content distributed across digital channels Flex More Marketing Muscle Than TV Ads

32 per­cent of moms and 24 per­cent of dads cit­ed dig­i­tal cir­cu­lar con­tent as the num­ber one type of ad to per­suade them to make an in-store pur­chase. In stark con­trast, TV ads have sig­nif­i­cant­ly less sway over moms (6 per­cents) and dads (13 per­cents).

4) Personalized ads moves shoppers from screens into aisles

79 per­cents of moms and 75 per­cent of dads are more like­ly to make an in-store pur­chase when they receive local­ly per­son­al­ized deals.

5) Future of Retail Will Be Played Out In Digital Pre-Shopping Funnel As Webrooming Helps Parents Track Down Deals

When asked if they use their desktop/laptop com­put­er, smart­phone or table to pre-search for “on sale” food/beverage items, 40 per­cent of moms respond­ed “yes, this is the first thing I do.”

6) Mobile deals and in-app promotions bring the web in-store

When asked about the val­ue of dig­i­tal pro­mo­tions and cir­cu­lars while stand­ing in-store, 19 per­cent of moms replied that “it’s very impor­tant… I reg­u­lar­ly check web­sites, mobile sites and apps for brand/prod­uct-spe­cif­ic pro­mo­tions and deals” and anoth­er 36 of moms believe “it’s some­what impor­tant… I am more like­ly to pur­chase an item in-store if I find a coupon or deal online.”

7) Low prices trump loyalty to preferred stores

When asked if online/mobile search­es for “on sale” items influ­ence which super­mar­ket they vis­it, 60 per­cent of moms and 50 per­cent of dads answered “Absolute­ly, I would be very inclined to vis­it a local super­mar­ket that offers/advertises the low­est prices and spe­cial deals.”

8) Facebook trounces Twitter and king of social

Over half of moms (55 per­cent) and just slight­ly less than half of dads (47 per­cent) believe Face­book is the most use­ful social media chan­nel to engage with CPG brands. Con­verse­ly, Twit­ter is close to the bot­tom of the pile with only 5 per­cent of moms and 7 per­cent of dads find­ing it use­ful.

9) Local Facebook offers are in high demand

77 per­cent of moms and 72 per­cent of dads over­whelm­ing­ly believe localised deals/offers on Face­book are impor­tant enough to affect the food/beverages items they drop into their gro­cery shop­ping carts.

10) Social proof and credibility steers shoppers into store aisles

39 per­cent of moms and 39 per­cent of dads care most about cus­tomer reviews/ratings when engag­ing with food/beverage brands on Face­book

11) Resistance to Facebook Ads is costly mistake for CPG brands

39 per­cent of moms and 42 per­cent of dads report­ed click­ing on Face­book ads at least once a week before vis­it­ing their local super­mar­ket.

12) One-size-fits-all online and mobile ads will deplete in-store sales

When asked what is the most frus­trat­ing about online and mobile ads from food/beverage brands, 35 per­cent of moms and 29 per­cent of dads cit­ed “infor­ma­tion and pro­mo­tions that are not local­ly rel­e­vant to products/prices in-store.”

(source: CPG Mar­ket­ing Rein­vent­ed, G/O Dig­i­tal)

The Digital Pre-Shopping Funnel

The over­whelm­ing take­away for mar­keters from GO Dig­i­tal’s report is for brands to pay close atten­tion to the way their con­sumers are behav­ing, and to find inno­v­a­tive ways to incen­tivize them with­out dis­rupt­ing their estab­lished shop­ping pref­er­ences.

As con­sumers use a more diverse range of devices inter­change­able, the report sum­maris­es, “CPG mar­keters must take notice and find new, inno­v­a­tive ways to make it easy, effi­cient and engag­ing for them to browse, clip and redeem those deals, no mat­ter where they may be”.

The les­son for CPG mar­keters and gro­cery retail­ers is sim­ple. Focus more on con­sumer behav­iours and less on chan­nel-spe­cif­ic tac­tics. Because par­ents… are high­ly-orga­nized plan­ners, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for CPG mar­keters to be extreme­ly tar­get­ed and rel­e­vant in the mes­sages, offers and ads served to them on their desktops/laptop com­put­ers, and on smart­phones and tablets as well.”

Dig­i­tal mar­keters should be look­ing to pro­vide con­sumers with per­son­alised offers that solve the real-time, local needs — as the shop­pers are indi­cat­ing that this is most effec­tive way to influ­ence their in-store sales.

You can down­load G/O Dig­i­tal’s full ‘CPG Mar­ket­ing Rein­vent­ed’ Report here.


What are your best sto­ries about dig­i­tal dis­rup­tion in the gro­cery mar­ket?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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