COVID-19 has not had such a big impact on convenience shopping frequency in Switzerland; 90% of people surveyed still buy in convenience stores at the same rate as before the pandemic, according to Convenience Monitor’s results. If there was a change it was mostly noticeable at stand-alone and train station shops where the shopping frequency decreased around 80%. This result makes a lot of sense, as people have tried to avoid public transport and work from home.

If you take a closer look at how much people buy, the average number of purchased products is 2.5. However, between the different convenience shops, 20% of survey participants indicated they buy between 4 and 10 products in stand-alone and train station stores, while 12% buy this number of products at gas stations. This result does not seem to be linked with the shoppers’ satisfaction with these shops, since 90% of the survey participants are satisfied with their performance. The results could be related to price perception as surveyed shoppers see much potential regarding the price/performance ratio. In more detail, they perceive gas stations and convenience stores at train stations to be more expensive than other stores, which leaves room for improvement and could explain why only a limited number of products are bought there.

If shoppers could create their ideal shop they would wish for an increased number of fresh sandwiches, cleaner/improved/more toilettes and products from the region. Moreover, 60% of surveyed participants asked for the ability to use self-checkout, as well as scan and go, driven by the desire for shorter time within stores and avoiding contact with other people to reduce the risk of exposure to coronavirus.

These results are just a small sample of our Convenience Monitor, a yearly publication since 2010. Since then, 26,237 consumers have been surveyed all over Switzerland.