March 2021: Total U.S. Online Grocery Sales hit $9.3 billion, up 43% vs prior year

Topline

The U.S. online grocery market finished March with $9.3 billion in sales, a return to January’s record spending levels, as over 69 million households placed an average of 2.8 online orders during the month, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey * fielded Mar. 26-28, 2021.

The 43% jump in sales versus year ago, when sales were $6.5 billion, quantifies the disruptive impact of a pandemic that continues to alter the way people get their groceries.

“A year since COVID-19 changed how we live, work, and shop, online grocery demonstrates continued strength and impressive staying power,” explains David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click.  “The monthly active user base remains robust, average order values are at similarly elevated levels and order frequency has gone up.”

The delivery/pickup segment captured $7.1 billion in sales (see chart below), accounting for more than three-quarters of total online grocery sales for March 2021.

Key Findings & Insights: March ’20 vs ‘21

The disruptor gets disrupted: Our new research shows how a year of accelerated growth has disrupted even online grocery.

According to the March 2021 Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey  , the 43% growth in total online grocery sales of March ‘21 over the same period in March ‘20 reflects a mix of factors and shows the ways that the pandemic has changed the way people engage in online grocery shopping:

Slightly smaller base of engaged households

Monthly active users dropped 7% from 74.5 million in March 2020 to 69.3 million in March 2021. The decrease was entirely driven by fewer households making online grocery purchases that are shipped to the home via common or contract carriers.

• The ship-to-home segment lost 27% of its monthly users on a year-over-year basis.
• The pickup segment gained 12% and delivery gained 23%.

The active user base moving away from ship-to-home and to the pickup and delivery segments is one of the ways online grocery has changed in the last 12 months.

Higher order frequency

Monthly active users placed an average of 2.8 online orders during March of this year compared to 2.5 orders a year ago.

The 12% gain in order frequency is mainly attributed to the fact that households were still largely shopping in physical stores until states announced stay-at-home orders, with California being the first to do so on March 19, 2020.

New dominant receiving method

In terms of order share, the ship-to-home segment captured the largest share of orders before the pandemic and even during March 2020. Over the past year, however, ship-to-home has ceded nearly 19 percentage points of order share to the delivery and pickup segments.

Today pickup is dominant way online orders are received in the U.S., showing another way that the pandemic has altered shopping behaviors.

• Cross-shop between pickup and delivery remained low, as less than 15% of households reported using both a delivery and pickup service in March ’21.
• This illustrates that customers have strong preferences for the method they want to use to receive their online grocery orders.

AOVs: delivery/pickup essentially flat while ship-to-home down

At $84, the average order value (AOV) for delivery and pickup orders remained essentially unchanged compared to a year ago, while ship-to-home declined 6% to $49 during the same period.

To put this in context, the average order values across all the segments in March 2020 where already at elevated levels, having risen by 16% to 18% versus pre-COVID levels as households had begun buying more groceries online.

Satisfaction rebounds

A year ago, online grocery shoppers faced a range of challenges related to the huge surge in demand, including out-of-stocks and insufficient order slot capacity, all of which degraded the overall experience and led to repeat intent rates plummeting to below 43%.

Today, retailers have largely addressed these issues and the effect is evident. For March 2021, the leading satisfaction indicator, “likelihood to use a specific service again,” has rebounded to 62%.

While repeat intent scores increased for both the most experienced customers and first timers, the gap between the two groups has widened vs March ’20. All satisfaction scores still remain significantly higher than pre-COVID-19 levels (Aug ’19).

Sponsor Appreciation

We thank the team at Mercatus for their continued generous support of the March research wave. Click here to see the April 15, 2021 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 Mar. 26-28, 2021 with 1,811 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 in terms of design, timing, and sampling for each of the surveys conducted Feb. 26-28, 2021 (n= 1,812), Jan. 28-31, 2021 (n=1,776) and throughout 2020: Nov. 11-14 (n=2,067), Aug. 24-26 (n=1,817), June 24-25 (n=1,781), May 20-22 (n=1,724), April 22-24 (n= 1,651), and March 23-25 (n=1,601).