June 2020 Online Grocery Scorecard: Growth in sales & HH penetration continues

New Research

Topline: June 2020

Many key performance metrics related to online grocery delivery and pickup activity climbed steadily in June, as concerns about COVID-19 continued to impact the way people shop for groceries and expanded fulfillment capacity is now enabling growth.

According the new June 2020 Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey , in the last 30 days:

• Online grocery sales grew over 9% to a record-setting $7.2 billion, compared to May’s $6.6 billion.
• This continued growth is driven by a 16% increase in the total number of orders in the past 30 days (85.0M vs. 73.5M in May) and relatively strong spending per order ($84 in June vs. $90 in May).
• Household penetration rose to 35%, as the total number of customers who ordered groceries online for delivery or pickup reached 45.6M for June vs. 43.0M for May.
• Purchase frequency also climbed 9% versus the prior month as active households placed an average of 1.9 online grocery orders for either delivery or pickup up in June, up from the average of 1.7 in May.

The growth equation flips

The growth in June illustrates that the use of online grocery delivery and pickup services is becoming a more integral part of how a broader base of consumers shop, as both order frequency and household penetration continue to increase.

Many grocery retailers have demonstrated amazing agility since the health crisis started, building surge capacity to better meet the astronomical growth in demand for shopping online. This increase in online grocery capacity has flipped the equation. Today as shoppers have more choice, the increased capacity is now actually enabling the continued growth of online grocery.

New SCORECARD

This ongoing research provides a consistent update on key performance metrics for US online grocery orders fulfilled by delivery or pickup for the past 30 days . (Note: The metrics exclude online grocery orders that are shipped to home via common or contract carriers.)

Monitoring the motivators

The June research also looked at several factors that help us better understand how health and loss of income are impacting shopper behavior.

• Health : 44% of the households surveyed indicated a “high level” of concern about catching/contracting the Coronavirus, up two percentage points from May. The increase was almost entirely driven by a 9% increase among shoppers in the over-60 age segment since May.
• Income Loss : The share of US households reporting a dramatic drop in income (25% or more compared to the January/February 2020 period) declined significantly in June, with 32% or approximately 42 million households reporting such losses compared to 39% or nearly 50 million the prior month.

About the research

Brick Meets Click conducted this online survey June 24-25, 2020 with 1,781 adults, 18 years and older, who participated in the household’s grocery shopping.

• Results were adjusted based internet usage among US adults, 18 years and older, according to the Pew Research Center, to account for the non-response bias associated with online surveys.
• Responses were also weighted by age to reflect the national population of adults, 18 years and older, during each respective year, according to the US Census Bureau.

A similar methodology was used with each previous month's wave in terms of survey design, timing, and sampling: May 20-22 (n=1,724), April 22-24 (n= 1,651), and March 23-25 (n=1,601).

Thanks to Mercatus

We thank the team at Mercatus for their generous support of the June consumer research survey. Click here to see the July 6, 2020 press release .