A comparison of bricks and mortar offerings to straight online alternatives gave the advantage across ambiance, convenience, service to the online world, with variety tying and price going to the bricks and mortar alternative mostly because of service fees incurred in the online world. With a store on every corner offering much the same variety, and with the replenishment retail dependency on pricing we looked to test customer satisfaction with today s offerings. The University of Michigan study on the retail experience measures consumer attitudes toward retail services ongoing. The measure of satisfaction has never been lower and continues to sink about a point per year. Consumers are ready to embrace online grocery shopping.
Interest is high.
Survey work we and others have done have indicated a strong conceptual interest on the part of consumers in grocery shopping online, with either delivery or store pickup . It also indicates some strong reservations. Further, the interest seems to span quite a wide range of household types , geographies and socio-economic factors. Consumption develops unevenly, but develops . WebVan reports 160,000 customers in the greater bay area.