Equity-Promoting Strategies in Online Grocery Shopping: Recommendations Provided by Households of Low-Income
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: November 2022
This journal article describes a study of people from low-income households with children. The study aimed to learn about participants’ experiences of online grocery shopping and hear their suggestions for how to boost low-income households’ access to healthy foods.
Primary Takeaways
Based on focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews, the authors concluded that:
- Delivery providers, grocery stores, nutrition educators, and policymakers should be involved in interventions that use online grocery shopping to increase food access.
- People in communities with lower income tend to distrust hired shoppers, worry about the quality of food they purchase online, and would like help planning healthy meals.
- Government food assistance benefits need to be easier to use online.
Overview and Objectives
Online grocery shopping could boost access to healthy food for people who live in food deserts. But some households who need better access to healthy food also don’t have access to the necessary devices and reliable internet.
The authors wanted to hear from grocery shoppers with low incomes about what prevents them from getting healthy foods when they grocery shop online and what might make online grocery shopping more equitable.
Hypothesis or Approach
Participants came from a group of Marylanders recruited via Facebook and Instagram to take part in a larger quantitative study. The researchers conducted 11 focus groups with 39 participants and five in-depth, one-on-one interviews. They asked participants about:
- Their thoughts about online grocery shopping.
- Their experiences shopping online and in person.
- Drawbacks and difficulties of buying online.
- How online grocery shopping might be more challenging for some people than for others.
- How easy it is to use SNAP benefits online.
- What might motivate them to buy groceries online more often.
How This Influences Change
The authors suggest improving online grocery shopping in a number of ways so that people with low incomes can buy healthier food. Grocery stores and shopping service providers could train hired shoppers and explore ways to promote healthier foods online. Nutrition educators could test curricula that focus on how to make healthy food choices when buying groceries online. And Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could expand subsidies for healthy foods bought online.
Research: Go Deeper
Objective: To explore barriers and facilitators of online grocery shopping and identify community-driven strategies to promote equity in online food access.
Design: This qualitative study used a purposive recruitment strategy to conduct 11 focus groups and 5 in-depth interviews between November 2020 and March 2021.
Setting: Data collection was conducted virtually with participants residing in diverse (majority urban) regions of Maryland.
Participants: 44 primary household food purchasers with young children (aged < 8 years) eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Phenomenon of Interest: Barriers and facilitators of online grocery shopping and strategies elicited by the community to leverage SNAP and online food retailer services to reduce inequities in healthy food access.
Analysis: We coded and analyzed transcripts on the basis of the Socioecological Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, and an Equity-Oriented Framework.
Results: Overall, we identified 10 themes across all socioecological levels, all of which reflected both barriers and facilitators to online shopping: (1) individual: trust of shoppers, technology, (2) interpersonal: spousal/children needs, (3) community: safety and security, (4) organizational: retail experience and food quality, and (5) policy: SNAP and structural inequities. Participant recommendations included improving food access and communication with hired shoppers, implementing more payment/cost-saving options, and offering educational programming for SNAP participants on using benefits online.
Conclusions and Implications: Households of low-income identified barriers and facilitators of online grocery shopping across the socioecological levels, emphasizing the need for a multilevel approach to equity promotion. We recommend future work to explore the suggested actionable pathways, which involve delivery providers, grocery stores, nutrition educators, and policymakers leveraging online grocery features (ie, meal planning support) and policies (ie, expansion of the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot to more retailers) to reducing deterrents (ie, delivery fees waived) for an equity-promoting online grocery environment.
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, November 2022, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2022.08.007
Figure 2. Contextualizing community-identified strategies to enhance online grocery shopping with components of equity-oriented obesity prevention and key stakeholders to partner with in intervention efforts. SNAP indicates Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- Ali SH
- Lloyd-Montgomery J
- Lowery CM
- Vedovato GM
- Trude ACB
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