Swiss consumers increase online purchase frequency for food as they counteract Covid-19 pandemics

The consumer behavior report examines what food products Swiss people order online, how often they buy online, and how much they spend per order. For understanding how consumers shifted their preferences during the Covid-19 pandemics, the report compares the behavior of the 12 months before Covid-19 with the 2 months lockdown period in Switzerland. Here are the main findings:

• Packed food, fresh food and cold beverages are the main food products bought online. The pandemics had no effect on this order.
• Consumers increased their frequency of ordering online: the share of people ordering online at least weekly increased from 18% before the pandemics to 28% during the lockdown.
• At the same time, consumers become more selective and order more specific products online rather than doing one large purchase once a while.
• The average spending per purchase is slightly decreasing: before the pandemics, a share of 60% was spending less than CHF 100 on food online. This share increased to 66%.

The survey was also talking about how consumers will adjust their online purchasing behavior post-Covid-19. 12% state to further increase their online orders and 33% state to keep it the same as now.

 

The report is available for free on our Observatory portal: https://observatory.netcommsuisse.ch/downloads/e-food-in-times-of-covid-19/

The presented data is part of the e-Food 2020 Consumer Behavior Report by Netcomm Suisse Observatory that will be published on 22 June 2020.

The report was created in close collaboration with our research partner AperaMente.

 

Research methodology:

• Computer-assisted web interviews (CAWI)
• 202 completed surveys of Swiss-based online shoppers
• Interview length: 15 minutes