A Consumer Perspective on Grocery Retailers’ Differentiation

Increasing competition in the Italian grocery market is pressing retailers to search for new ways to differentiate themselves and gain a better competitive position in the mind of consumers. In this scenario, we intend to explore consumers’ perception of grocery retailers in order to understand which store attributes consumers consider to be most important when choosing where to shop and which store attributes consumers perceive different between retail store formats and between grocery retailers. Our findings show that consumers do not perceive great differences neither among retail store formats, nor among grocery retailers. Even if they recognize structural differences among retail store formats, they perceive a growing similarity between them in terms of meeting shopping needs. Moreover, only few retailers are perceived as highly differentiated in managing the retail mix levers. Our work provides grocery retailers a specific knowledge of the attributes that consumers consider to be most important when making grocery store choice and suggests retailers which levers they should manage in order to be perceived differentiated from competitors, achieve a sustainable competitive advantage and consolidate their position in the market.