A third (33%) of all grocery shoppers claim they will conduct a dedicated Christmas shop this year, with the remainder of shoppers using a mixture of stockpiling (19%) and adding additional items to their usual grocery shopping (48%) to prepare for Christmas.
Recent research on behalf of Retail Intelligence by Empathy Research, amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 18+, sought to understand how shopping behaviour changes in the run up to Christmas.
Grocery shoppers appear to be influenced by two main areas when it comes to picking which grocery store they will visit at Christmas. Almost 1 in 5 (17%) grocery shoppers claim they will visit a specific store, which they may not ordinarily visit, to avail of a specific deal which may be on offer in that grocery store. A similar proportion claim they will visit a specific grocery store to buy certain food types in the run up to Christmas. Just over a third (34%) claim they will visit a specific grocery store for both deals and certain food items in their Christmas shopping.
Just over four in ten (42%) of those who claim they will visit a specific grocery store this Christmas, which they may not ordinarily visit, will visit Marks & Spencer’s, with frozen party food to the fore as a key motivation for visiting. A similar proportion (39%) claim they will visit their local butcher for Christmas items this year. Those who typically shop in Dunnes Stores are more likely to visit both Marks & Spencer’s and their local butcher this Christmas, with SuperValu shoppers also recording higher than average levels of visitation to their local butcher.
For more information and in-depth analysis relating to this piece of research, including the repertoire of grocery stores used at Christmas and which items are purchased in each grocery store, please contact Robbie Clarke at Empathy Research.
© 2016 – Checkout Magazine
