Page 153 - Proceeding of Atrans Young Researcher's Forum 2019_Neat

“Transportation for A Better Life:
Smart Mobility for Now and Then”

23 August 2019, Bangkok, Thailand

commerce apps which are better optimized for importance. The top three reasons were expensive
mobile phones (54.3%), better internet connectivity delivery fee, uncertainty about the quality of the food
(42.9%), more convenient collection points (34.3%) or grocery delivered, and slow delivery time. For
and cheaper delivery fees (31.4%). Thus, the result food, the top reason is expensive delivery fee
shows that among intuitive motivations like (64.8%), followed by uncertainty about quality of
promotions, better internet connectivity, cheaper food (43.7%) and slow delivery time (26.8%).
costs, having more convenient collection points is
also an important e-commerce motivation to
consumer.

For the 50.7% of respondents who have not
shopped online during commutes, the main factor
that hinders them from doing so is the inconvenience
to shop during commute (63.9%), followed by
security and privacy issues (38.9%), being too busy
to shop while in commute (30.6%), poor internet
connectivity (27.8%) and e-commerce sites that are
not mobile friendly (22.2%). 16.7% do not shop
online at all and thus does not shop during commutes Fig 2 Factors that deters respondents from buying
as well. Therefore, to encourage these consumers to food online
shop online during commutes, retailers could focus
on providing convenience by, for example For groceries however, the main reason was
simplifying purchase process or steps, increasing uncertainty about the quality of groceries (47.8%),
security of purchase as commuters are often in close followed by expensive delivery fee (39.4%), slow
proximity with one another and enhance the usability delivery time (25.4%) and uncertainty about future
of their mobile e-commerce sites. availability (19.7%). Due to these challenges,
Singaporeans may not be motivated to change their
After gaining a general understanding of the current habits of purchasing food and groceries from
mobile commerce habits of respondents, the survey physical supermarkets and restaurants. From the
focused on e-commerce and delivery of the products results, it can also be inferred that some of the most
in the food and beverages sector, a sector which the challenging issues hindering potential customers
solution concept targets. When asked how often from purchasing food and groceries online is the
respondents buy food online, 43.7% responded that high cost of delivery fees, slow delivery time and
they purchase a few times a month or more, 40.8% uncertainty of availability to receive delivered goods
of respondents buy food a few times a year and and the elimination or reduction of these hindrance
15.5% have never bought food online before. This may increase the amount of consumers who engage
could be due to the variety of food delivery in online purchases of food and groceries.
companies in Singapore who are competing to get
more customers by giving promotions and
increasing the quality of service. However, for the
online purchase of groceries, majority of
respondents, 43.7%, responded that they have never
bought groceries online before. From the results, it
is evident that Singaporeans have engaged in the
online purchase of food more than groceries. The
results also suggest that there are still challenges or
service insufficiencies in the grocery and food e-
commerce sector to be addressed.

To understand the challenges, respondents
were asked about the reasons for not buying food and Fig 3 Factors that deters respondents from buying
groceries online
groceries online. For both food and groceries, the top
three reasons were the same, but in different order of

128