A new Brick Meets Click study shows the online share of total grocery spending is up 22% over 2017, increasing to 5.5% in 2018 from 4.5% last year. Other findings included:
Spending by weekly active online grocery shoppers increased 61%, rising to 46% of the household’s grocery spending in 2018 from 28% in 2017.
- Fifty-four percent of consumers use Amazon to shop for groceries online each month, while 19% shop online with mass merchants, 18% with supermarkets, 10% with others, 8% with club stores, 7% with online delivery platforms and 5% with meal kit providers.
- Online spending is expected to grow by 13%, or 10 times faster than in-store sales, which are expected to grow 1.3%. The steady shift of grocery purchases online highlights how important it is to capture a share of the online business to secure a solid market position.
- Online’s share of total spending is expected to exceed 8% by 2022.
- Spending per order is up 11%. This reflects a shift in consumers doing their online shopping with providers that fill small one- or two-item orders to those that fill larger orders.
- The household penetration of 18- to 29-year-olds is increasing, while the percentage of 30- to 44-year-olds who regularly shop for groceries online is holding steady. This age group places the largest online grocery orders. Meanwhile, older shoppers’ household penetration has declined somewhat since 2017, which indicates spending on customer acquisition of online shoppers will be more effective when targeted to younger shoppers.
- Eighty percent of active online grocery shoppers use services from just one type of provider, suggesting the time required to learn to use an online service may discourage many from cross-shopping. Of this group, almost half use Amazon for online grocery orders. This isn’t surprising, due to Amazon’s early lead in online shopping and its broad range of services.
- Just 69% of monthly active online shoppers plan to use the same service again.
For the full story, go to this week’s Food Institute Report.