Shoppers visited fewer different grocery retailers last week, but visited them more frequently, according to Channel Pulse, HIM and MCA Insight’s new weekly measure of shopper and consumer behaviour,

Compared to the previous week, the w/c 30 March 2020 saw visit frequency across all grocery retail channels increase and the volume of different retailers visited per shopper either decreased or remained the same.

The average convenience store shopper visited 2.2 times (+5%), supermarket shopper 1.9 times (+6%) and discounter shopper 2.1 times (+17%).

As shoppers get into more of a routine, loyalty to a given retailer is also on the rise, with the average convenience shopper visiting 1.5 different c-stores in the week (-12%), supermarket shoppers visiting 1.5 different supermarkets (-12%) and discounter shoppers visiting 1.1 discounters (no change).

Familiarity, ie “it’s where I usually go” remains the number one driver to store, however it has seen a decline across all day-parts. Confidence, demonstrated by the motive “I knew they would have what I want”, is growing in importance, as shoppers choose the stores that they believe will have the products they want in stock.

Blonnie Walsh, head of Insight at HIM & MCA Insight said, “It has now been over two weeks since lockdown began and shoppers are starting to find more of a routine and are visiting fewer stores per week to find the items they want. Interestingly, shoppers visited grocery retail stores more frequently last week than the week before, despite increased awareness of the government guidance to limit the number of trips for essentials.”

“Unsurprisingly availability is key to attracting shoppers. Shoppers are increasingly choosing a particular store because they were confident it would have the items they needed. Communication both online and in-store is key to reassuring shoppers that a retailer has a good range available – particularly for products that are deemed essential and harder to find.”