An investigation of multichannel shopping behavior: evolution in a grocery retailer in Spain

E-commerce in Spain is growing year by year, boosted mainly by the positive evolution of three variables such as: the percentage of Internet users, the proportion of Internet shoppers, and the average online spending per shopper. However, although grocery retailers were among the first marketers to incorporate the Internet as an additional shopping channel online grocery shopping in Spain is still low. In this work we analyze the evolution of the online shopping behavior for groceries for the same groups of clients of one of the major grocery retailers in Spain in a 4 years elapsed time. This chain was a pioneer selling groceries online, opening its online store in 2001. To do so, we analyze the purchase behavior of the clients per channel (offline and online), and the characteristics of the shopping baskets per client at each purchase occasion or trip. We also classify customers evaluating their use of the two channels.