Online grocery delivery hampered by picky shoppers

Despite the best efforts of Coles, Woolworths and a growing number of grocery delivery start-ups, Australians have failed to embrace buying their groceries online.

According to research firm Roy Morgan, the number of shoppers who buy groceries online in any given four-week period has plateaued at around 3 per cent for the last two years, after rising from 1.6 per cent in 2012, news.com.au reports.

Still, around 30 per cent of shoppers say they would consider doing so in the next 12 months, according to the same research. So what is causing the disconnect?

A survey of US consumers by investment bank Morgan Stanley, published by Quartz, has found 84 per cent of shoppers said they chose not to order online because they preferred to physically see and choose their groceries.

Cost was a distant third place in the Morgan Stanley survey, with just 26 per cent of people citing more expensive online products as the reason. The number two reason was that the shopper had tried online grocery shopping already and didn't like it.

Worryingly for the likes of Amazon, which is likely to launch its AmazonFresh grocery delivery when it arrives in Australia later this year, the number of people saying they had tried it and didn't like it increased from 17 per cent in 2016 to 27 per cent in 2017.

"We have two rules of thumb when shopping for produce," US grocery delivery start-up Instacart tells its shoppers in a 2014 training video. "One, don't buy it if you wouldn't eat it. And two, buy what's fresh to eat today. When picking fresh produce, please make sure there are no bruises, no cuts, no mould, it's not too soft, not too hard, just perfectly right.

"The perfect banana is yellow with green at the tips. For larger quantities, pick ones that are less ripe. If the customer orders 15 bananas, they're going to need more time to eat them.

"A ripe avocado will be firm, not too hard and not too squishy. You'll want to look for an avocado that has dark green, nearly black skin. Do not pick avocados that are shiny, because that means they are underripe.

"There are a lot of specifics to picking the best produce, and you will be an expert after a few weeks on the job."

It all sounds like a lot of work - with a lot of room for error due to personal preferences - and on the whole it seems like shoppers prefer just to do it themselves.

That's not to say there aren't online grocery shopping diehards, however. According to a survey by research firm Canstar Blue of 1200 shoppers who already buy online, 22 per cent do all of their grocery shopping online, while 42 per cent expect to do so in the near future.