Review of the Kroger Mobile App

Kroger was founded in 1883 by Barney Kroger, who invested his life savings of $372 to open a grocery store in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Kroger is now the nation’s largest grocer with nearly 2,800 stores in 35 states operating under 28 different names, including Fred Meyer, Fry’s and Ralph’s (The Kroger Co., 2017). The Kroger app has a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on the Apple App Store with 1.2M ratings.

I use the Kroger app or website very frequently to create pick-up grocery orders or at the very least, clip coupons. The app gives you four different options for how to shop: pickup, delivery, ship, or in-store (see picture below).

For a pickup order, you select the store where you will pick up your order and choose items that you would like to purchase and add them to your cart on the app. When you checkout, the app will provide you with options for a pickup date and hourly time slots. You choose your date and time, come to the store within that hour, park in the designated pickup area of the parking lot, and the workers will bring your order to you and load it in your car. Delivery is the same shopping process of adding items to your virtual cart, yet you will choose a date and time for delivery directly to your house, rather than picking up at the store. I have never chosen to ship but the app advertises it as an option to “buy in bulk.” Finally, in-store gives you the option to create a shopping list from which you can check off items in the store. When you choose the in-store option, it automatically switches your cart to a list, which is a convenient feature.

The feature that I enjoy the most is the virtual coupons. If you click on savings, there is a coupons section with coupons that you can “clip” to be added directly to your Kroger-plus card (discount card). Then, when you check out on the app or scan your card in the store, the coupons automatically apply if you have purchased those items. This helps a lot with meal planning and cost-saving; I usually check out the coupons first to see if there are any great deals that I can plan my shopping around. I especially like the “shop all items” button below each coupon. If you click this, it brings up a list of all items that this coupon applies to and you can add the items directly to your cart.

I also enjoy using the weekly ads section for the same purpose. This shows you a virtual version of their weekly ad flyer. However, it also allows you to click on each item and you can click “shop now” to show you the items and allow you to add it directly to your cart; this is a handy function.

Although I really enjoy using the app to shop and find most of the usability and design to be functional, there are a few areas that I believe can be improved upon. First, I have found it difficult in the past to figure out how to switch stores. The home page has an icon at the bottom telling you the shopping option (pickup, delivery, ship, in-store) and the store that is currently selected. It seems logical that you would click on that to enable you to change the store. And it does allow you to change the store from that screen. However, the “change store” always confuses me because it does not look like a clickable button (see photo below). It looks more like a header, something that you would not be able to click on; I always see it as a header for the four options below it, when, in actuality, you can click on it and it will bring up a list of nearby stores or allow you to type in a zip code to find a store. I would encourage the app designers to make it look more like a clickable button than a header.

Secondly, while I love the coupons section, I wish that it would just bring up all the coupons and the search bar for coupons as soon as I click “savings” at the bottom of the page. Instead, it brings up a screen with a coupons section where you must then select “View All Coupons” to see the coupons and search through available coupons.

Finally, I think that the app could be improved by showing the customer the available pick-up or delivery times before checking out. Currently, you are only able to see the pick-up times once you click check out. However, sometimes (especially if you are shopping on the weekend) the pickup times might not be until the next day evening. This could create an issue if you needed the food before then and could cause frustration or wasted time if you have already created an entire cart’s worth of groceries.

In all, the app is very user-friendly, and I believe that it is straight forward enough for anyone to figure out how to use. I use it often and it allows me to plan our shopping efficiently and utilize the store’s sales and coupons to save my family money.

Resources:

Our History. The Kroger Co. (2017). Retrieved March 9, 2023, from https://www.thekrogerco.com/about-kroger/history/