Shopping for sources: An everyday information behavior exploration of grocery shoppers' information sources

The field of everyday information behavior addresses how individuals interact with information in their daily lives. Previous research in the field has largely ignored the banal and quotidian portions of everyday life, such as grocery shopping, which represents a gap the current project fills. Through two empirical studies using qualitative methods, the present work presents the prevalence and variety of information sources used by grocery shoppers. Findings indicate that grocery shoppers rely on close human sources, domain-specific sources, and on surprisingly few online sources throughout the process of their grocery shopping. The findings demonstrate the information-richness of grocery shopping and suggest that other everyday spaces may be fruitful areas for information behavior research.