Delivery fuels online grocery sales.
According to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey, total U.S. online grocery sales fell 6% in March to $8.7 billion from a record high of $9.3 billion. dollars in March 2021. Total sales for the first quarter of 2022 ($8.5 billion in January and $8.7 billion for February and March) ended down just 2.5% from a year ago. one year old.
The year-over-year performance of the three online grocery segments has varied as the online grocery market continues to evolve.
The home delivery segment saw the largest year-over-year sales contraction in March, falling more than 30% to $1.4 billion from $2.1 billion in March 2021 The decline is due to a 13% reduction in the number of orders. placed by monthly active users (MAUs) combined with a 23% drop in average order value (AOV).
Grocery pickup sales fell nearly 11% in March, from $4.3 billion in 2021 to $3.8 billion in 2022, impacted by similar factors but to varying degrees. Order frequency for pickup was down 8%, while AOV fell less than 4% from a year earlier.
In contrast, delivery saw strong sales growth in March, rising more than 20% year-over-year from $2.9 billion to $3.5 billion. The number of orders placed by MAUs increased by 13% and AOV increased by 7% compared to 2021. (Delivery includes orders received from a primary or third-party supplier such as Instacart, Shipt or the company’s own employees retailer.)
“Two factors continued to drive the strong delivery performance in March,” said Brick Meets Click partner David Bishop. “First, the aggressive expansion of third-party vendors into grocery is giving people new ways to shop online. And second, new services focused on faster cycle times are appealing to a wider range of mission travel and usage occasions.
• Cross-purchasing between grocery and retail has gained momentum, with the share of the grocery MAU base also shopping online with retail during the month increasing by nearly 4 percentage points from a year ago, reaching 29% in March 2022.
• The likelihood of an online grocery shopper using the same service again within the next month also increased in March, climbing to nearly 64%, up 1.4 percentage points year-on-year. the other. Analysis of month-over-month results showed March repeat intent rates at mass vendors improved by 8 points while grocery intent rates lost more by 5 percentage points compared to February 2022.
• On a quarterly basis, total online grocery sales for the first quarter of 2021 were only 2.5% lower than the prior year period, with home deliveries down 29 %, pickups down 2% and deliveries up 15%. Ship-to-home lost 6 points of market share on delivery while pick-up, the dominant segment, remained stable.
During the first quarter of 2022, ship-to-home ended with 17% of eGrocery sales. The share of pickup remained essentially unchanged at 46% and delivery accounted for 38%.
“A key takeaway from the March report is that online grocery sales retained much of the gains from a year ago, proving the resilience of grocery e-commerce,” said Sylvain Perrier, President and CEO of Mercatus. “Even then, conventional grocers need to grow and strengthen their proprietary web and mobile channels, leverage third-party solutions to fill the gaps, and excel in the execution of the services they offer.”
In terms of wallet share, total eGrocery ended the quarter at 13.1%, compared to 13.7% last year. Excluding door-to-door delivery (since most conventional grocers do not offer this service), the combined share of delivery and pickup increased by approximately 40 basis points, representing 10.9% of total spend groceries in the first trimester.
The Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey is an ongoing independent research initiative created and conducted by Brick Meets Click and sponsored by Mercatus. Brick Meets Click conducted the survey on March 28-29, 2022 with 1,681 adults ages 18 and older who participated in Household Grocery.
