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Shopper Beware: The Temptation of Rapid Delivery
Why we should try to resist the allure of rapid grocery delivery.
Posted September 2, 2022 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Consumers are often tempted into ordering rapid grocery delivery.
- Doing so might seem harmless, but it will eventually hurt neighborhood shops and workers.
- To resist this temptation, consumers should consider what would happen if they made a habit out of ordering rapid delivery.
- When consumers think about making a habit of indulging in a temptation, they find it easier to resist, because the costs become apparent.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic started, online grocery delivery skyrocketed. Many of us preferred selecting groceries from the comfort of our home and having them delivered to our door to the sometimes cumbersome experiences of shopping in stores with screaming children or unwieldy shopping carts. The pandemic supercharged this trend, as the fear of contracting a virus from fellow shoppers made trips to the grocery store even less enticing.
Yet, even since COVID-19 cases have been declining all over the world, new players have entered the grocery delivery market with a mission to permanently change consumer habits. Rapid grocery delivery services such as Zapp, Gorillas, GoPuff, or Getir make a novel promise: Groceries can be ordered through an app and delivered within mere minutes to your door, with delivery times often around 15 minutes. This option sounds great to busy parents who cannot leave their children alone to pop into the store or people who have guests and urgently need a few extra beers without leaving the house.
Nevertheless, shoppers should try to resist the temptation of rapid delivery whenever possible.
The reason is simple: Whereas a one-time rapid delivery is certainly harmless for the shopper and the market overall, repeatedly using such services will ultimately harm small bodegas and corner shops. Rapid delivery companies will hike up prices and phase out promotions once venture capital funding has dried up, as we have seen with other companies that set out to disrupt existing markets (e.g., Uber or Lyft). We should think about the costs that massive growth of rapid delivery would have, such as much less lively cities that miss the neighborhood anchors of those small grocery shops and workers who must fend for themselves in the tough business of delivering groceries under massive time pressure.
As consumers, we often think that our daily decisions are harmless, with negligible negative consequences. Just as one donut doesn’t compromise our healthy diet and one skipped workout doesn’t undermine our fitness, one rapid delivery will not harm the little shops that make our neighborhood lively. However, my research with Prof. Thomas Mussweiler has shown that it’s precisely when temptations seem small and harmless that we often don’t invest the effort to resist. After all, one little thing that we want now can’t really do that much harm.
When we think about each decision as one of potentially many similar ones, we have an easier time perceiving the costs of giving in to temptation. One donut is harmless, but a donut every day will eventually make us less healthy. Similarly, one rapid delivery is harmless, but ordering one every day will hurt our neighborhoods and make us poorer once prices increase.
Thus, approach the rapid delivery option as you would any other temptation. A treat for special circumstances or a helpful alternative when you really need something that you forgot to buy. But beware of creating a habit that you might later come to regret.
References
Steinmetz, J., & Mussweiler, T. (2017). Only one small sin: How self-construal affects self-control. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 675-688.
