How conveniences, assortment and customer experience steer customers behaviour in drive-throughs grocery

The drive-throughs (DT) are now perceived by some customers as a service that complements the bricks-and-mortar groceries. This paper aims to investigate on what determines the customer behaviour of this new hybrid distribution channel. The study is based on a quantitative analysis of data collected from a sample of 791 DT customers in France. It performs a descriptive analysis using SPSS software. To analyse latent relations between DT characteristics and customer behaviour variables, the paper run a structural equation modelling (SEM) method using AMOS. The paper finds that ‘access convenience' and ‘quality of assortment' emerge as two preponderant explanatory variables for DT customers behaviour. In contrast, the customer experience has a significant rather negative or insignificant effect on the customer behaviour. Likewise, the quality of information and the quality of reception (contact with personnel) have positive but very insignificant effects on customers behaviour. This research contributes to the theory of service in the extent that it sheds light on the importance of combining convenience with assortment in order to facilitate customer's journey on the DT shopping. This importance can be twofold: help retailers to cope with constraints of rapid distribution of such perishable products and to meet customer requirements.