Survey On Consumer Current Behavior

Monday, April 3, 2017

---

The financial crisis has significantly changed the purchasing behavior of Greek consumers. This often refers to the volume of offers in response to the spotted new habits that are adopted in recent years, however, the survey did not combine the findings in order to assess changes and influences on key parameters of the purchasing behavior, e.g. in relation to the frequency of visits to the supermarket, and to highlight the potential of organized retail strategies.

Nowadays the Greek consumer is proved to be more intelligent and targeted against the market, but intend to purchase a smaller number of products per visit. For example, the growth and volume of offers contribute to the significant savings for the consumer, pushing him to become quite mobile and willing to visit at higher frequency, more stores to find favorable deals and competitive prices, but also to test new options.

Visit frequency vary in supermarket chains

On the overall current consumer visits in various food distribution channels, IELKA research showed that the typical weekly visits habit food market now includes over 12 visits to a food market, almost two per day. These 12 hits allocated from 3 to 5 visits to the supermarket (4.3 on average), 2 to 6 times in a bakery store (4.0 on average), farmer’s market (1.6 on average) and maybe twice per week to a specialized store (e.g. greengrocery, butcher’s, or minimarket /kiosk). Note that this is the average standard behavior, as there are several more consumers characterized as quite active in visits. At the same time, a change is recorded in their visiting preference by distribution channel although the average of weekly visits to the consumer at the supermarket is now 4.4 times, but the average consumer visits is 2.1 to different supermarket chains, which practically translates entering to a chain twice per week (or 3 visits to "its preferred"chain and one additional visit to another chain for additional purchases or special offers).

The differentiation in consumer’s behavior was recorded for 2016 in the survey constituting to steadily growing visits to the supermarket chains, more than the visits to the bakery for buying bread. This is a particularly significant development, which is associated with the currently provided opportunity to the supermarkets to penetrate to new markets, such as fast food or food-to-go.

It is worth mentioning that the supermarkets is visited by 99% of consumers at least once weekly, while it includes almost 1 in 4 visits and twice within the same day. 45% of consumers say that they visit more stores for comparing prices and subsequent purchases. As mentioned above, this increased traffic is associated largely with the strong growth of offers and discounts provided by large supermarket chains. Most consumers ’hunt’ more offers and have a clear picture of how much money they may save by making "smart shopping". It is important the conclusion that consumers find that they save on average through tenders, coupons and gift-vouchers by supermarkets or suppliers around 10% of the total value of their purchases, with 1 in 5 to save more than 20%.

However, the majority of consumers (71%)although they visit the supermarket stores to meet their weekly needs in products, 80% of them make targeted visits, 40% visit the store to buy a particular offer, while 43 % start to the supermarket offering a short-term sales discount for a product. Other reasons for visiting is to purchase the fast food or coffee, paying bills, etc. Also, 22% considered the visit to the supermarket as an opportunity for having fun, while the majority of consumers consider visiting the supermarket as their favorite family habit.

The case of “food-to-go”

Purchasing prepared food or meals does not constitute for most consumers the main reason for visiting the supermarket, but it offers an important opportunity for the development of organized ready-made food in retail stores, in line with similar movements of the chains in the international market.

As recorded in the survey, the meals’ market focus continues to be an important market where the average household has to focus about 125 euros per month (1,500 euros per year), despite a significant 40% demand reduction in the years of recession. A large part of this market is the “fast food” and or “food-to-go”.

According to the findings of the research by IELKA most consumers buy specific food categories at very high rates. Ready-made coffee is purchased by 87%, pastries and snacks-cheese croissant by 85% of consumers, cold ready-to-consume meal (e.g. salad, sandwiches) is bought by 70%, cooked food by 63% and frozen meals by 51%.

In several of these categories supermarkets have a significant trend of penetration, e.g. the categories of sweet snack or a cooked food, but in any case there is also significant growth opportunity in others, such as coffee. Besides, the penetration strategy of supermarkets to convince consumers to purchase food-to-go ends up incorporating bakery within the supermarket, after the clear improvement of legislation translated in the repsective investment aiming at providing in-store services of major bread market and ultimately finished bakery products.

Within this same context, there is an advantage to switch the purchase of "a snack" in the bakery to be taken place inside the supermarket store. In the future we will observe significant investments from major supermarket chains in many different markets where there is significant penetration margins (eg in the area of fresh products or food supplements markets), which represent an opportunity for the further development of the retail industry.