Consumer adoption of online grocery buying: a discriminant analysis

Purpose To empirically investigate whether consumers who have adopted online grocery buying perceive this way of shopping differently from other online consumers. Design/methodology/approach The data presented in this study were collected from an online (web‐based) survey of US consumers using self‐administered questionnaires. Data from 784 US online consumers are analyzed. Findings Multiple discriminant results suggest that online grocery shopping adopters attach higher compatibility, higher relative advantage, more positive social norms, and lower complexity to internet grocery shopping both compared with consumers who have never bought anything on the internet yet and also compared with consumers who have purchased goods/services on the internet but not groceries. The results also suggest that online grocery shopping adopters have higher household incomes than non‐adopters. Research limitations/implications This research used a single respondent as a household representative. Since grocery buying concerns the entire household, this procedure assumes that the selected respondent provides answers which are representative of the household's opinion. Practical implications Provides practical advice to online retail managers on how to attract different consumer online grocery segments. Originality/value This paper investigates both experienced and inexperienced online grocery consumers. Thereby the paper adds to the understanding on how different groups of online consumers perceive characteristics of the online grocery channel.