Australian supermarket chain, IGA, has the most loyal customers, according to recent findings by consumer research company, Roy Morgan Research.
The results indicate that in any given four week period, 30 per cent of grocery buyers exclusively shop at IGA, followed by Woolworths/Safeway (25 per cent), and Coles (24 per cent). Despite its increasing overall market share, Aldi sits at the bottom of the list, with only 7 per cent of consumers doing their grocery shop in its entirety there.
“As our data has confirmed many times and in many different ways, Australia’s supermarket scene is incredibly competitive, and these latest findings throw another challenge into the mix. While most grocery buyers have a supermarket they mainly shop at, a relatively low proportion of them shop exclusively at that supermarket. They do not seem to have any great sense of loyalty to their main chain,” said Andrew Price, GM consumer products, Roy Morgan Research.
“These results suggest that customer loyalty programs such as FlyBuys (held by more than half of Coles shoppers) and Everyday Rewards (held by more than 60 per cent of Woolworths/Safeway customers) are not achieving the desired result.”
When asked how many major supermarkets they shopped at over the last four weeks, 37 per cent of Australian grocery buyers reported shopping at two, 28 per cent said three and 7 per cent said they shopped at all four. This pattern is relatively consistent among Woolworths/ Safeway shoppers, Cole shoppers and IGA shoppers, for whom visiting two supermarkets is the most common scenario.
When it comes to Aldi, however, the greatest proportion (47 per cent) of their shoppers visits three supermarkets in an average four week period.
