The corona pandemic also affects our shopping behavior.
There are other reasons why time is more important than price in the supermarket today.
Düsseldorf - Shopping behavior has changed significantly in Germany in the wake of the corona pandemic *.
As a study by the market research company NielsenIQ found, more than half of consumers are less fun shopping for consumer goods than they did a few years ago.
Data from 20,000 households were evaluated for the study.
As Nielsen expert Thomas Montiel Castro observes, people “felt the need to reduce their purchases, that was true in the first and second lockdowns and it still applies”.
The fear of contagion is only one factor - and perhaps not even the most important.
Young people in particular no longer wanted to spend so much time shopping.
"In Corona you learned that there are more exciting things with which you can spend your free time."
Corona pandemic: people shop less, but more
According to NielsenIQ, the trend is therefore towards shopping less often and then doing everything in one fell swoop. Spontaneous shopping trips to the bakery, to the drugstore or to quickly get some cold cuts at the meat counter are becoming increasingly rare, says Montiel Castro. The trend is towards large stock purchases or, as the market researcher calls it, the “big trolley” - the large shopping trolley. “Quite a number of households only started making such large inventory purchases during the pandemic. Shopping behavior has changed massively here. "
The winners, however, are not the large hypermarkets or discounters such as Aldi * or Lidl *, where German consumers have mostly done their bulk purchases in the past, but the classic medium-sized supermarkets such as Rewe * or Edeka *. According to a recent study by market researcher GfK, supermarkets increased their sales by 6.3 percent in the first half of 2021, while discounters sold 1.4 percent less. Business stagnated in the large hypermarkets.
“The classic supermarkets are attractive because, on the one hand, they offer a large selection, but on the other hand, visiting them does not take as much time as in the self-service market.
When they are working from home, people no longer go to the self-service market on Saturdays to go shopping, but more often use the extended lunch break to go shopping in the supermarket around the corner - and they like to do so in the middle of the week, ”reports Montiel Castro.
Shopping: study sees lasting changes
The market researcher is convinced that the trends will continue even after the end of the pandemic. Because the upheavals were not only related to Corona. “Just 10 years ago, the price and special offers were the main determinants of where to buy. But with the younger generation of customers, this no longer plays such a big role. It has become more important for them not to spend so much time shopping. "
Retail expert Robert Kecskes from the market research institute GfK also sees lasting changes as a result of the crisis - such as the greater importance of eating in one's own four walls.
According to his assessment, the pandemic “set in a kind of elevator effect”, which initially raised domestic consumption by four or five floors in 2020 in order to stay on this floor in the first half of 2021.
It is to be assumed that the freight elevator with the domestic consumption quantities will move down again with the return to a more normal life.
Kecskes is convinced that "he will no longer go back to the ground floor in 2019".
Shopping: Family time is becoming more important
According to a representative survey by the market research company IRI, around a quarter of consumers * want to spend more time at home with friends and family and cook more often even after the end of the pandemic. Almost 40 percent of those surveyed were convinced that even after the end of the pandemic, shopping will be different than before.
E-commerce is also one of the winners of the pandemic. According to Nielsen, consumer goods sales on the Internet rose by 34 percent in 2020. Nevertheless, online trading in food, animal feed and other consumer goods still does not play such a major role in Germany as it does in other European countries. While the market share of e-commerce in consumer goods in this country is currently just 1.2 percent despite the corona boom, it is 10.2 percent in France * and 11.9 percent in Great Britain *.
This reflects the high density of shops in Germany, but also the reluctance of large German retail chains when it comes to e-commerce, says Montiel Castro. "The e-commerce boom caused by the corona pandemic has turned out to be significantly weaker for consumer goods than many expected."
(Dpa) * Merkur.de is part of IPPEN-MEDIA
