Considering how new the COVID-19 pandemic was in the summer of 2020, it’s no shocker that online grocery sales from conventional grocers was 6.8% higher than in that same time in 2021.
Conventional grocers reported a 6.8% drop in online grocery sales on a same-store basis during the three months ending September 28, 2021, compared to the prior year, according to Brick Meets Click research.
The grocery analytics and strategy firm released its eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave, which showed a 3.1% decrease in orders combined with a 3.9% decline in the average order value, according to a news release. Those two factors contributed to the drop in sales on a year-over-year basis.
“We know from our monthly eGrocery shopping survey that Mass (the mass-market retailer segment, such as Walmart and Target) is driving the online grocery sales gains in the broader U.S. market,” Brick Meets Click Partner David Bishop, said in the release, “so benchmarking is incredibly valuable because it enables grocery retailers to compare their performance versus their peers to identify improvement opportunities.”
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The research was sponsored by grocery eCommerce software Mercatus, display equipment and refrigeration systems manufacturer Hussmann Corp. and digital bank advertising platform Cardlytics. The online transactional data is linked to non-personal identified households across nearly 950 stores from 45 U.S. banner retailers.
The first of the initiative’s three reports releases this week and focuses on topline performance findings, including:
- Age of online operations did not significantly impact overall performance. The 7% of locations that had operated their online grocery services for less than a year did not report significantly lower sales compared to stores with longer running operations, likely due to COVID-related circumstances. Before COVID, Brick Meets Click documented a strong and positive correlation between sales and the age of the service;
- Offering customers multiple ways to receive orders did impact performance results. Weekly online grocery sales for stores that offered both pickup and delivery were 44% higher than stores offering only delivery and 55% higher than stores offering only pickup;
- Altogether, delivery accounted for more than 60% of all online orders, but when stores allowed customers to receive orders via either delivery or pickup, delivery’s share dropped to just over 50%. Only 49% of stores in the sample offered customers the choice between the two methods; and
- Stores in medium-sized markets generated higher weekly sales than stores in more-populated trade areas. This is a significant flip compared to the 2019 benchmarks, and most likely due to the growth in the availability of competing online services in the larger markets.
The complete results of the Brick Meets Click eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave will be released in a series of three reports.
- Top-line Performance Findings: Includes a public webinar 1 p.m. Central Time, March 3;
- Key Customer Metrics: Releases mid-February and focuses on key customer metrics, ranging from acquisition and churn rates to buying patterns by customer cohort, with more perspective from Cardlytics; and
- Top-Quartile Analysis: Releases in mid-March and focuses on revealing factors and issues that can show grocers how they can further improve performance with practical guidance from Mercatus.
For information about access to the research and the reports, go to brickmeetsclick.com.