Grocery lists: connecting family, household and grocery store Raewyn Bassett and Brenda Beagan Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, and Gwen E. Chapman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to investigate grocery list use in the lives of participant families in a study on decision making about food choices and eating practices. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 46 families from three ethno-cultural groups living in two regions in Canada participated in the study: in British Columbia, 12 Punjabi Canadian and 11 European Canadian families; in Nova Scotia, 13 African Canadian and ten European Canadian families. In each family, at least three individuals over the age of 13 years, one of whom was a woman between the ages of 25 and 55 years, were interviewed. Researchers participated in a meal and accompanied each family on a grocery trip. Findings – Most family members contributed to a grocery list. The shopper(s) in the family may take the written list with them, have the list in memory, use a combination of both memory and written list, or shop without a list. Finds the articulation of taken-for-granted, intersecting knowledge about family, household and grocery store, necessary to the compilation of a list, were largely unseen, unrecognised, and undervalued. Originality/value – Studies on grocery lists have focused on who uses lists, how they are used, and what their use says about consumers. In the literature, non-list use is conflated with the absence of a tangible grocery list. Shows that lack of a tangible list does not mean absence of a list in all cases. Further, extends and contextualises existing literature, showing that grocery list compilation relies upon interrelated knowledge of family, household and store. Keywords Shopping, Decision making, Food products, Canada, Individual behaviour Paper type Research paper Introduction The grocery list has been of little interest to researchers as an object of investigation. While it has caught the imagination of the occasional poet (Young, 1981) and writer (Moody, 2005), in research, the grocery list has been merely a proxy measurement tool. The exception has been in the field of consumer science where a few studies on shopping behaviours have investigated the use and non-use of the grocery list. Our interest in grocery lists developed with the frequent mention of the creation and use of lists by participants in our study on family food decision-making. Participants discussed the creation of the grocery list in family settings, and we observed its in-store use when we accompanied the family shopper on a grocery trip. We found the grocery list had meaning and significance to our participants that went beyond its itemised contents. In this paper we explore the meaning of the list and its use by families. We The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0007-070X.htm The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support received from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Grant No. MOP-62856). The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. BFJ 110,2 206 British Food Journal Vol. 110 No. 2, 2008 pp. 206-217 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0007-070X DOI 10.1108/00070700810849916