Grocery e-commerce maintains popularity among US buyers as sales drop to US$8.5B
US – US shoppers continued to demonstrate a rising preference grocery e-commerce in August despite total sales dropping 1% to US$8.5 billion, the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey has revealed.
According to the survey, delivery orders made up just under 41% of grocery e-commerce purchases, up from around 34% during the same period in 2021.
The two organizations saw that consumers continued a pattern from previous months, choosing mass merchandisers over traditional food merchants for repeat digital orders in August.
Compared to the previous year, weekly food spending for August 2022 does exhibit symptoms of inflationary pressures.
However, this is partly because of the locations of customers’ stores and the quantity of the typical order.
As a result of households reporting spending slightly over US$200 over the last 7 days, overall grocery spending in August increased 14% over the same month last year.
During August, the composite average order value (AOV) for the Delivery and Pickup segments increased 10% over the previous year to US$87, while the AOV for Ship-to-Home declined 20% to US$40.
“The COVID pandemic motivated trial of Delivery and Pickup services at a scale that no one could have predicted,” David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click, said in a statement.
He notes that as the pandemic evolves, it’s increasingly clear that many households find online grocery shopping an acceptable option to complement their new in-store shopping behaviors.
According to Claire Tassin, retail and e-commerce analyst at data intelligence company Morning Consult, inflation’s impact on retail spending in August was apparent, as it has been in recent months.
The assessment is an ongoing independent research project run by Brick Meets Click and funded by Toronto-based Mercatus, an expert in groceries e-commerce.
Pickup options include in-store, curbside, locker, and drive-up services, while delivery options include retailer and third-party services (such Instacart, Shipt).
Online grocery deliveries made by package delivery services like Federal Express, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service are included in ship-to-home sales.
According to Claire Tassin, retail and e-commerce analyst at data intelligence company Morning Consult, inflation’s impact on retail spending in August was apparent, as it has been in recent months.
Over half of customers reported spending more on groceries through July, according to data from a Morning Consult survey, which Tassin had highlighted in an article earlier this month.
“August’s retail sales numbers exceeded expectations, but given the latest CPI numbers, we know that inflation is still having a major impact on spending,”Tassin observed.
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