Mar 2022 U.S. Online Grocery: Total sales reach $8.7 billion, down 6% vs last year

Top Line

In March, total U.S. online grocery sales pulled back 6% to $8.7 billionversus March 2021’s record high of $9.3 billion according to the BrickMeets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey fielded March 28-29, 2022 .

Total sales for 1Q 2022 ($8.5B in January and $8.7B for February andMarch) finished just 2.5% lower compared to a year ago.

On a quarterly basis, Pickupcontinued to capture the largest share of total online grocery sales at46%, while Delivery and Ship-to-home captured 38% and 17%, respectively.

"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 range of reasons that will benefit this service model going forward,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click.

Key Findings & Insights

March YOY performance shows how the market is evolving.

Ship-to-Home experienced the largest sales contraction, plummeting over 30% compared to a year ago from $2.1 billion to $1.4 billion.

• The decline was driven by a 13% reduction in the number of orders placed by Monthly Active Users (MAUs) combined with a 23% drop in the average order value (AOV).

Pickup sales declined almost 11% from $4.3 billion in 2021 to $3.8 billion in 2022, affected by similar factors but to different degrees.

• Order frequency for Pickup declined 8% while AOV dipped less than 4% versus the prior year.

Delivery reported strong sales growth, surging over 20% on a year-over-year basis from $2.9 billion to $3.5 billion.

• The number of orders placed by MAUs climbed by 13% and AOV rose 7% versus 2021.

Cross-shopping between grocery and mass gained momentum.

The share of Grocery’s MAU base that also shopped online with Mass during the month increased nearly 4 percentage points versus last year, finishing at 29% for March 2022.

Repeat intent: Overall level higher vs year ago & Mass regains top spot.

The likelihood for an online grocery shopper to use the same service again within the next month also increased during March, climbing to 64%, up 1.4 percentage points on a year-over-year basis.

• Analyzing month-over-month results showed that during March repeat intent rates at Mass providers improved 8 points while Grocery’s intent rates lost more than 5 percentage points versus February 2022.

The quarterly view

Total eGrocery sales for Q1 2022 were just 2.5% lower versus Q1 2021 with Ship-to-Home down 29%, Pickup down 2%, and Delivery up 15%.

• For the first quarter of 2022, Ship-to-Home, finished with 17% of eGrocery sales while Pickup’s share remained essentially unchanged at 46% and Delivery accounted for 38%.

In terms of share of wallet, total eGrocery finished the first quarter at 13.1%, slightly down from 13.7% last year.

• When excluding Ship-to-Home (since most conventional grocers don’t offer this service), the combined Delivery and Pickup share grew around 40 basis points, accounting for 10.9% of total grocery spending during Q1 2022.

Sponsor Message & Appreciation

"A keytakeaway from March’s report is that online grocery sales have retained much ofthe gains from a year ago, proving the resilience of grocery eCommerce,” saidSylvain Perrier, president and CEO, Mercatus. "Even so, conventionalgrocers need to develop and strengthen their first-party web and mobilechannels, leverage third-party solutions to fill in the gaps, and excel atexecuting the services they offer."

We thank the team at Mercatus for their continued generous support of this research. Click here to see the March 17, 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 March 28-29, 2022,with 1,681 adults, 18 years and older, who participated in the household’s grocery shopping. This research is scheduled to run monthly through 2022; then the cadence will be reevaluated to best suit the industry’s needs.The three receiving methods for online grocery orders are defined as follows:

• Ship-to-Home includes orders that are received via common or contract carriers like FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc.
• Delivery includes orders received from a first- or third-party provider like Instacart, Shipt or the retailer's own employees.
• Pickup (aka curbside) includes orders that are received by customers either inside or outside a store or at a designated location/locker.

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 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 2022 - Feb. 26-27 (n=1,790),and Jan. 29-30 (n=1,793); in 2021 – Dec. 29-30 (n = 1,836), Nov. 29-30 (n=1,785), Oct. 29-30 (n=1,751), Sept. 28-29 (n=1,728), Aug. 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); in 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).