Online grocery sales continue to climb along with customer expectations

Over 68 million households reported to order groceries online from a wide variety of providers in February ’22, an 11% increase from February 2021. Total order frequency also beat last year’s figures by 3%, with households completing an average of 2.73 orders per month.

Pickup, the largest segment of the online grocery market, grew 6% versus a year ago, generating $4bn in sales accounting for 47% of the total sales during the month.

Delivery reported a year-over-year gain of 37%, which equated to $3.2bn, capturing a 37% share of e-grocery spending, Brick Meets Click data revealed. Ship-to-Home, which was once held the largest share of the market accounting for 40% of the online grocery segment pre-COVID, is now the smallest, dropping to a 16% share since 2019 and down 24% year-over-year in sales to $1.4bn.

“New service providers, a broader range of retailers selling grocery-related products online, and services targeting faster cycle times contributed to delivery’s strong sales growth, but even so, more shoppers still prefer Pickup for a range of reasons that will benefit this service model going forward,”​ noted David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click.

The likelihood for an online grocery shopper to use the same service again within the next month was 62% for the month, climbing by more than 4% on a year-over-year basis, according to Brick Meets Click. Despite consumers’ growing preference for purchasing their groceries online, customer expectations for service providers are also on the rise, noted Mercatus.