If you want to buy food through the internet, here are some strategies on how to save money grocery shopping online.
For those who buy food on the world wide web, here are some tips on how to save money grocery shopping online. These tips can be useful because while many of us buy items online, we usually don’t buy groceries online. Therefore, we’re not as familiar with the ins and outs of online food shopping.
Focus on Buying Nonperishable Items
According to Consumer Reports, online retailers can sell certain food items for up to 10% cheaper than brick-and-mortar grocery stores. Specifically, these are nonperishable food items. However, perishable things, like meat, milk and cheese are usually less expensive at the regular grocery store. One reason is that grocery stores use perishable items as their loss-leaders. This means they sell those items at a price that’s so low, they might even lose a little money to get customers into their stores to buy the higher priced items. Contrast this with online retailers, where non-perishable items are often their loss-leaders.
A second reason why perishable items are often cheaper offline is that there’s a higher risk of loss on the online seller. Until you receive your gallon of milk at home, ensuring the milk arrives in proper condition is on the online seller. At the grocery store, once you check out with the gallon of milk, the risk of loss is on you, the consumer. So if you get stuck in traffic and the milk gets too warm on your way home, you pay for another gallon of milk, not your grocery store.
Set Up a Recurring Purchase
You can buy some grocery items directly from the manufacturers and when you do, they sometimes give discounts for customers who set up a regular purchase for those items. So in addition to cutting out a middleman, you get a recurring purchase discount, further increasing your savings.
Keep in mind that this strategy will only apply if you consume a lot of a particular item, since recurring purchase discounts require more than small purchases that individuals typically make at the grocery store.
Buy Specialty Items
For items rarely found in stores, buying them online is probably your only option. But in many cases, even if you could buy that unique food product in-person from a local retailer, they would probably charge you more than an online seller. This is understandable because there’s a lot of overhead in selling items in a physical store, and stores selling specialty items often carry products that few people want.
Make Use of Cashback Shopping Portal Websites
Sites like EBates allow users to earn cash back on the purchase they make online. Instead of going directly to the website, they go to EBates first, then go to the website where they will make the purchase. This extra step only adds a few seconds to the purchase time and doesn’t change anything concerning the overall price of the item. Users can expect 1-5% cash back, depending on the online merchant and shopping portal website used.
Buy Baby Food
Baby food is often cheaper online than in stores. Add the fact that many baby food items are available in bulk (babies eat a lot!) just adds to the savings.
Use a Rewards Credit Card
When you buy online, you can’t pay with cash. Most likely, you’ll pay with a credit card. When buying groceries, be sure to use a credit card that offers cash back or some other lucrative reward that you need or will use. Depending on the credit card, this can amount to 2% or more of the sale right back in your wallet simply for making a purchase you were going to make anyway.
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