Robertson works on what women want

MURDOCH University post-graduate studies program chair and University of Western Australia PhD student, Grant Robertson, believes shopping for groceries on the Internet will become common-place in 10 to 20 years.

Mr Robertson has been studying consumer interaction with online retail around the world for the past four years on a part-time basis and has so far identified four categories of users.

“The first were trial shoppers. They only use the Internet occasionally and they are doing it because people said they should, and they’re doing the cost benefit analysis,” Mr Robertson told WA Business News.

“The second is the speciality shopper. They are attracted to things like the electronic grocery list. Most people don’t shop with lists; they use the cues in the aisles. But online, there’s the list.

“A lot of people don’t like that they’re purchases are being tracked but big companies are already doing that and more people are understanding that and they’re now wanting to know what they bought last time.

“The third category I call nasties. They don’t like the bulky items and standard items like washing powder and toilet paper. So they’re getting that online.

“The fourth category is the dependant shopper. They buy everything online and go to the corner store for bread or everyday items.”

Mr Robertson said that, as more consumers trusted online retailers, people would become dependant online shoppers.

“Stores need to gain the trust of consumers,” he said.

“It might be sending something like fruit or something highly perishable with dry goods someone bought to show them the quality.”

Mr Robertson said consumers selected online retailers that had tangible brands.

“Most people will want an association with an external brand, so retailers need to cleverly link an online store with a bricks-and-mortar operation,” he said.

“The other thing is that in a grocery store people can make last-minute changes and when a certain item is out of stock they can get a substitute.

“But if someone has ordered it online and are dependent on it for that night than there needs to be good substitution, which requires good pickers.

“One respondent said she had ordered yoghurt but got chocolate pudding instead and it was because the packer was a teenage boy; what do they know about groceries?

“He thought yoghurt was pudding so put that in, so retailers have to make sure the person doing the picking acts as a proxy.”

Mr Robertson said Internet shopping research to date tended to focus on business use rather than what the consumer wanted.

“I’m asking them what they want, and considering 70 per cent of grocery shoppers are women and most of these sites are designed by men, it’s really looking at what women want.”

Mr Robertson said most people were attracted to Internet shopping because of the convenience it offered them.

“Women with young children really want that, they hate going to the supermarket with the kids who are tempted by the eye-level goodies.

“And also, socially we are busier and there are distance-related issues.”

But the longer-term trend, he said, was towards greater use of the Internet.

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