Grocery shopping and Internet: exploring French consumers' perceptions of the hypermarket and cybermarket format

The e-commerce growth is questioning traditional retail formats and spatial consumer behaviour theories. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), especially Internet, now play a major role in retailing. With the stagnation of the hypermarket format in France, developing ICT could be a way for grocery retail companies to grow again. Some questions arise concerning the consumers' acceptance of these new technologies for food retailing. Which associations and perceived usages can be imagined by the consumer between ICT on the one hand, and his/her favorite store on the other hand? To what extent could consumers integrate ICT in their current or in future grocery shopping behaviours? Within this context, this paper focuses on the "consumer-store" relationships. The research aims at exploring consumers' perceptions of hypermarket and cybermarket formats for grocery shopping. The methodology is qualitative and based on 18 semi-structured interviews and on three focus groups of French consumers. Results show that the hypermarket format continues to make sense for customers while the cybermarket format remains unclear for French consumers except for two targets "the organised" and the "grumblers".