Dec: U.S. Online Grocery Sales Total Nearly $100 Billion for 2021

Top Line

The U.S.online grocery market captured $8.9 billion in sales during December as over 69million households shopped online to satisfy grocery-related needs, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey fielded December 29-30, 2021.

December’s strong results helped annual online grocery sales reach $97.7 billion for 2021as more than 70% of U.S. households (93 million) received one or more orders during the year.

Even though most grocery retailers used third-party delivery platforms when they began selling online, the U.S. is a Pickup-dominant market. That dominance continues across markets of all sizes, except in some of the largest urban markets where Delivery overtook Pickup for the first time in December 2021.

“If retailers are surprised by these results, it’s likely because they are missing a broader view of how and where customers are shopping online for groceries,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “Even before the pandemic started, Pickup was preferred over Delivery. Then in April 2020, Pickup took the top spot away from Ship-to-Home, and it’s kept that spot ever since.”

Key Findings & Insights: December 2021

Share of total weekly grocery spending up to 13%

• Online’s annualized share of total grocery spending for 2021 was almost 13%, up nearly two percentage points from the previous year.
• Adjusting 2021’s online share to exclude Ship-to-Home reveals that the combined Pickup and Delivery segments captured 10% of total grocery sales,up 2 points from 2020.

Order frequency holding steady, averaging 2.74 orders/month

• Since January 2021, the average number of orders placed by MAUs has consistently ranged between 2.66 and 2.83, and December 2021 continued this trend with MAUs placing an average of 2.74 orders.

Sales and orders continue to shift from Ship-to-Home to Pickup as Delivery remained unchanged

• Full-year results for 2021 showed that the Pickup segment grew its share of online sales to 45%, up 5 percentage points versus 2020, while Delivery’s share remained relatively unchanged at 33% and Ship-to-Home’s dropped 5 points to 22%.

Cross-shopping between Grocery & Mass/Supercenter grows

• During December 2021, the share of Grocery’s monthly active users who also placed at least one online order with Mass jumped to 29.1%, setting a record high for this shopper metric.
• Cross-shopping with Target rose sharply while Walmart dipped slightly and the gap between the two retailers shrank to only two and half percentage points, the smallest it has ever been.

Repeat intent climbs: Grocery surpasses Mass

• The likelihood that a monthly active user will order again from the same online grocery service inthe next month landed at 62.9% for December 2021, 7.6 points higher than prior month.
• For Dec ‘21, Grocery repeat intent rates surpassed Mass by 1.3 points.

Sponsor Message & Appreciation

“The state of online grocery in the U.S. today underscores not only the need for grocers to compete online for sales, but also the imperative to develop and implement more sound strategies that improve profitability as sales growth becomes more challenging,” said Sylvain Perrier, president and CEO, Mercatus. “In this regard, putting customer satisfaction at the center of the shopping experience is paramount and requires implementing an operational process that is not only efficient for the retailer but also caters to customers’ demand for quality and convenience.”    

We thank the team at Mercatus for their continued generous support of the December research wave. Click here to see the January 11, 2022 press release .

About this Consumer Research

* 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 December 29-30, 2021, with 1,863 adults,   18 years and older, who participated in the household’s grocery shopping.

Results were adjusted based on internet usage among U.S. adults to account for the non-response bias associated with online surveys. Responses are geographically representative of the U.S. and were weighted by age to reflect the national population of adults, 18 years and older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Brick Meets Click used a similar methodology for each of the surveys conducted in 2021 – November 29-30 (n=1,785), October 28-29 (n= 1,751), September 28-29 (n=1,728), August 29-30 (n=1,806), July 29-30 (n=1,892), June 27-28 (n=1,789), May 28-30 (n=1,872), Apr. 26-28 (n=1,941), Mar. 26-28 (n=1,811), Feb. 26-28 (n= 1,812), and Jan. 28-31 (n=1,776); throughout 2020 – Nov. 11-14 (n=2,067), Aug. 24-26 (n=1,817), Jun. 24-25 (n=1,781), May 20-22 (n=1,724), Apr. 22-24 (n= 1,651), and Mar. 23-25 (n=1,601); and in 2019 – Aug. 22-24 (n = 2,485).