It's a New Year once again and here at Field Agent we wanted to look into how the Canadian Grocery Shopper is feeling as we enter 2025. Over the past week we surveyed 885 Canadian grocery shoppers to get inside their minds and see if we might be able to decode how they might behave in 2025.
Generally, Canadians seem to be pessimistic about the overall economic context with expectations for higher inflation, higher unemployment rates and limited wage growth in 2025. That is generally not great news for the retail and consumer driven companies.
In terms of where Canadians will shop for Groceries we see Costco having exceptional strength with 58% of respondents naming it as one of its Top 3 grocery retailers, while Walmart and Superstore round out the Top 3 banners.
Canadians choose their favourite grocery store based on Feature / Sale Prices (53%) Loyalty Program (46%) and Location (37%).
Walmart is the lead retailer Nationally for QUICK TRIPS while Costco is the leading choice of Canadians for STOCK UP TRIPS.
We asked respondents what they wanted the leadership of their main grocery retailers to focus on in 2025 and we asked ChatGPT to help us summarize the main themes. Here is what shoppers want their retailers to focus on:
- PRICING & COST
- PRODUCT QUALITY
- PROMOTIONS & DEALS
- PRODUCT VARIETY & LOCAL SOURCING
- CONVENIENCE
Finally, in the e-commerce space 49% of Canadians said they shopped on-line for Groceries in 2024 and 20% bought Meal Kits last year. Both of these numbers seem to be trending downwards for 2025 when we asked respondents to project out how they will shop this year.
It seems like 2025 is going to be a bit of a "bumpy ride" for the grocery industry - if you need help in tracking what is happening in-stores, getting your products in consumers hands or getting reviews on your products on-line - you need Field Agent!
