Multichannel advertising a necessity to meet SA shoppers' current needs

These are the insights that emerged from two recent consumer research surveys: Project Eat, undertaken by BMi Research in conjunction with Spark Media, and Roots 8.0, jointly undertaken by Caxton and Spark Media together with their partner, Borderless Access.

The Project Eat survey took place between August and September 2023, and researched 100 online shoppers per day for 30 days. It conducted daily interviews around the main meal that respondents had eaten the day before as well as any food and grocery shopping done the previous day. The survey represented 900 million main meals as eaten by South Africans in a month. The daily quota sample represented economically active South Africans who shopped for groceries for the home.

Roots 8.0 covered consumer behaviour, including shopping habits, home, food and groceries, entertainment, fashion and beauty, finance, technology, readership and pathway to purchasing decisions made in South Africa.

It independently sampled 97 local communities in all the major centres in South Africa, interviewing 23,000 adults aged 18+, representing 9.3 million adults and 3.9 million households.

A combined shopping approach

GO2insightz (wave 1-7), a living consumer intelligence tracking tool from Borderless Access, revealed that 71% of grocery shoppers and 61% of affluent grocery shoppers living in households earning more than R50k per month shopped exclusively in-store.

Only 7% of all grocery consumers and 9% of affluent grocery consumers shopped exclusively or mostly online. A total of 22% of all grocery shoppers and 31% of affluent grocery shoppers combined in-store with online shopping.

Roots data supported these findings. It indicated that while the Covid-19 pandemic had accelerated online shopping, with 33% of economically active shoppers shopping online or shopping online more often, this had dropped off significantly since then.

"There was a perception that online shopping would replace in-store shopping post-pandemic. However, that has not been the case. In store is still the preferred channel when it comes to grocery shopping. But we are seeing shoppers using a combination of online and in-store shopping for food and grocery purchases," explains Lynne Krog, Spark Media head of research.

Print and digital play complementary roles

Similar to the thinking that online shopping would replace in-store shopping is the long-held perception that digital media would replace print media. Once again the research showed otherwise. Although consumers were still predominantly using print at home to source the best food and grocery specials, increasing numbers of shoppers were also including digital channels in their repertoires.

Roots 8.0 indicated that consumers used multiple touchpoints when searching for specials, while Project Eat discovered that even online consumers used print adverts when looking for grocery specials.

As many as 74% of daily shoppers looked for specials, with 81% using print media at home and 53% using online sources. Digital use was higher on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and print use was higher on Thursdays and Fridays, ahead of the weekend shop, when consumers had the time to go from store to store to buy their specials.

"Digital media has not replaced print as a search and planning tool, but rather has been added to shoppers' repertoires of sources. Again we're seeing consumers use a combination of resources, with print and digital media complementing each other to meet consumers exactly where they are in the pre-shopping planning process," adds Krog.

This emphasises the importance of brands and retailers adopting a multichannel approach to food and grocery advertising. Print and digital advertising should be used together, with the research informing which days and weeks to target specific shoppers to maximise both consumer reach and spend.