When it comes to grocery shopping, Australians find a number of annoying things from trolleys to other shoppers.
Canstar Blue has surveyed 3,000 adults to name their top supermarket gripes.
Men turned out to be more likely than women to complain about queues at the checkout. Women are more likely to get stressed about items being sold out
Meanwhile, men are more likely than women to get annoyed when they can’t find an assistant, while women are more likely to be frustrated by other shoppers.
The older the shoppers, the more frustrated they are with the checkout, according to survey data. Only 15 per cent of 18-29 year-old named this as their biggest annoyance, compared with 28 per cent of those aged 60 and over. Younger shoppers are more likely to raise concerns over store layout or self-service machines not working properly.
Other areas of complaint included coin-operated trolleys, the height of shelves, and promotional offers taking up aisle space.
In different supermarkets, complain vary.
Checkout queues are the main cause of complaint at Woolworths, Aldi and IGA. At Coles, the shoppers’ number one grievance is sold out items. In Aldi, shoppers are most likely to complain about other customers.
“Ultimately we’d all love to have a supermarket all to ourselves, but it’s never going to happen. The best thing you can do to try and avoid the stress is to pick a quiet time to shop. But again, life is not that simple. That’s why we all seem to end up there at the same time!” said head of Canstar Blue, Megan Doyle.
“I’m sure most shoppers can tolerate the occasional problem with items being sold out, or having to queue at the checkouts, but it’s when these issues become the norm rather than the exception that people will really get fed-up.
“It seems we’ve been complaining about having to queue up at the checkouts forever, yet it’s an issue the supermarkets have never managed to address to everyone’s satisfaction. The introduction of self-service checkouts has clearly helped get customers in and out faster, but they are not immune to long queues and frustrations. In fact, queuing to use a self-service checkout is arguably more annoying than queuing at a normal checkout because you expect the process to be quicker.”
