Background:
Households are increasingly using online grocery platforms to order and deliver foods and beverages. Understanding how shoppers engage with these digital food retail environments inform efforts to address unhealthy diets and obesity. We aimed to understand purchasing behaviour and influences on these behaviours of carers of school-aged children when shopping for groceries online across different socioeconomic groups in Australia, and potential ways to improve the healthiness of online grocery shopping platforms.
Methods:
We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with parents or carers that are regular uses of online grocery shopping platforms in Australia. A combination of deductive and inductive thematic analysis was undertaken.
The Marketing Mix model was used as the theoretical basis for both the formulation of the interview guide, and for the initial deductive analysis.
Results:
The findings revealed that most participants consistently perceived it as more challenging to purchase healthy food online compared to in physical stores. They expressed concerns about the prominence of online marketing for unhealthy food, feeling prompted to buy such items by supermarket websites. In an attempt to save money, many participants relied on the online versions of supermarkets' catalogues to search for food and drinks on price promotion, but they noted the limited availability of healthy options at discounted prices. Additionally, many participants expressed a preference for buying fresh items like meat and fruit in-store due to concerns about quality of foods that they selected online.
Most participants supported the idea of restricting supermarkets' ability to promote and offer discounts on unhealthy food online.
Conclusion:
Efforts to improve population diets need to include mechanisms to create online grocery shopping platforms that are health-enabling. Government interventions to restrict marketing of unhealthy foods on these platforms warrants investigation.