The Impact of Consumers’ Mobility on Choice of Grocery Shopping Channel

The nature of grocery retailing has changed considerably with the introduction of online (and) click-and-collect channels. Furthermore, this is happening in a dynamic spatial environment that has diverse mobility characteristics, more so in the specific case of Belgium. The combined effect of these two phenomena significantly impacts consumer shopping behaviour (i.e. store and channel choice). Although, multichannel retailing and mobility behaviour have both been acknowledged as importance domains of research, there is a general paucity of research that investigate the relationship between these two phenomena. This research examines the impact of consumers’ mobility on the choice of grocery shopping channel, taking into account the different residential environments and life stages of consumers. We use Structural Equation Models (SEM) and stratify our analysis by residential environment and life stage of consumers.
Our overall findings suggest that different mobility factors (i.e. distance to store, car ownership and trip chaining) impact choice of grocery shopping channel differently. More specifically, we found that the click-and-collect channel is favoured by consumers who live farthest from the store however this behaviour is true for only small town – nonurban consumers. On the contrary, car ownership influenced consumers’ choice of using the click-and-collect channel only in urban areas. Additionally, we did not find significant support for the notion that the presence of children within a household had any influence on the relationship between mobility and consumers’ choice of using the click-and-collect grocery service. For marketers, our findings have implication on the location strategies they can utilise to maximise their reach and accessibility to consumers.