This is the moment in time when nearly everyone “cares” about marketing produce/groceries online. Will it last?
By next July, when vaccines for COVID-19 will be available and widely accepted, will the industry’s preoccupation with online sales still persist?
Will consumers ditch “logging on” in favor of a leisurely stroll through the local grocery store?
Just yesterday I was in the produce section of a national retailer. I picked up a bag of mandarins and put it in the cart. Before I checked out, I noticed that fruit was very soft and on the edge of ruin. I switched the mandarin bag for an 8-pound bag of very nice navel oranges.
I wondered if the "personal shopper" for an online order would have plunged ahead with the soft mandarins. Snap judgment calls like that complicate the long-term customer satisfaction with online orders, I think.
Most likely, online grocery and produce sales will continue to grow(at a slower rate), but the psychological mindset of the shopper after the pandemic is hard to predict.
Recent news about “click,” online retail and grocery:
- KVIA.com Online grocery shopping is growing, but millions of Americans on food stamps are being left behind From the story: “Many SNAP recipients, including older people and people with disabilities, won’t have the ability to participate and shop online because they do not live in states covered by the Agriculture Department’s online program or are in areas outside of retailers’ delivery zones.”
- The total U.S. online grocery market posted $8.1 billion in sales during November as 60.1 million U.S. households placed on average 2.8 orders during the month, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey fielded Nov. 11-14, 2020;
- Active delivery and pickup shoppers reported a record-high repeat intent rate of 83%, according to Brick Meets Click;
- In November, online grocery sales attributed to delivery and pickup services increased 3.6% compared to August 2020, according to Brick Meets Click;
- Comparing November to August this year, the number of monthly active users grew about 3% to 38.7 million households while the average number of orders that these users placed increased 2% to 1.62 per month;
- Brick Meets Click research showed that the probability that a first-time customer will use a service again is 59% as compared to 94% for those who placed four or more orders;
- Numerator, a data and tech company, reports online made massive gains in Black Friday weekend shopping, moving from 24% share of spend in 2019 to 38% share of spend in 2020, with Amazon.com the big winner at 19% of total spend in 2020, up from 11.7% in 2019.
- Techcrunch.com Who is building the grocery store of the future? A story looking at how Amazon is trying to take “friction” out of grocery shopping;
- > Grubhub releases top trends report "Vegan and vegetarian trends slowed down in 2020 as popularity for vegan-friendly products only grew by 13% (compared to 27% in 2019). And while Americans turned to comfort foods, they weren’t all traditional options as the popularity of meat alternatives soared by 463% in 2020.”
News about Amazon Brick:
- Connect.media:“Amazon Fresh Will Make Illinois Debut in Naperville This Week” From the report: Amazon is opening its first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Illinois on Dec. 10 in Naperville, the fifth Amazon Fresh store nationally and the first outside California.Other Chicagoland stores are planned for Bloomingdale, Oak Lawn and Schaumburg, according to the report.