Retailing &Service Management 2021

Understanding The Shopper Journey For Improving Customer Experience: An Empirical Study In Grocery Retail

Sandro Castaldo, Monica Grosso

Preparing the shopping list, driving to the store, finding parking, defective carts, long lines for fresh products, finding items, poor product info, checkout, payment, unclear receipts, carrying heavy shopping bags home, and forgotten items are some of the most common barriers experienced by grocery shoppers during their customer journey. These are also the most common reasons why shoppers decide to switch to alternative retailers or to online grocery channels. Retailers have to (1) understand these critical moments of the grocery shopping journey, and then (2) find new solutions to simplify them using technology. This effort produces results that increase shoppers’ customer experience (CE). This is the only option for online retailers to survive and to guarantee the future of their physical stores.

#customer experience #customer journey #customer-based strategy #grocery retail #technology #touchpoints