Consumers in Swiss Online Grocery Shops

Consumer behaviour in online shops has not yet been the subject of many research projects. We know little about the demographics of online customers and even less about the factors influencing their decision to buy. Initial research results show that — in online commerce too — trustworthiness of suppliers is the factor which most influences willingness to buy (see Jarvenpaa et al., 1998). And, of course, practitioners do market research both by questionnaires and server statistics. Most well-known online shops such as http://www.Amazon.com, Dell Computers, Streamline Inc. gain competitive advantage by systematically gathering data from customers, analyzing it and using it to shape their virtual storefronts, product ranges etc. This data is most often proprietary and not available to outsiders. As a contribution to understanding the selling of consumer goods on the Internet, the research presented here takes one example, grocery shopping in Switzerland, to learn more about online customers’ characteristics and behaviour. Interviews were conducted with the three leading online grocery shops in Switzerland and a survey was done with 1037 online customers.