CONSUMER PREFERENCES IN BUYING FOOD ONLINE

Trading, just like any other human activity, keeps changing and evolving. In this context, what mainly changes are methods and techniques used to transport goods from producers through wholesale and retail all the way to end consumers. Nowadays, the internet is used by more and more people and for many companies represents an important distribution channel, to target on groups of customers. Currently the internet is increasingly used in food sale as a distribution channel. The subject of the paper is to evaluate consumer preferences when purchasing food online. This paper, follow up customers experiences, preferences and last but not least willingness try to use "e-grocery" among customers of all ages in various regions of the Czech Republic. Data acquired in the framework of quantitative research and questionnaire survey has been selected as a methodological tool for this paper. Respondents were persons from different age groups and from various regions of the Czech Republic. The questionnaire concerning online shopping of food preferences has been answered by 669 respondents, 44 % of men and 56 % women. For the evaluation of the questionnaire survey statistical methods were used to examine the dependence between the variables (Fischer, Pearson test). Research shows that over 24 % of the respondents have experience buying food online and over 5 % buy food online on regular basis. Furthermore, it has not been proven that the frequency of food shopping affects the place of purchase. There has been evidence of dependence between age and experience of purchasing food online, where younger persons have more experiences. The research was realized through questionnaires survey at the turn of 2017 and 2018. The contribution of this paper is to present current preferences of customers in innovative approaches in food buying as a guide for food vendors.