Brick Meets Click teases new data, shows dip in online grocery sales
New data from Brick Meets Clicks reveals a recent dip in online grocery sales for retailers. On a same-store basis during the 12 weeks ending Sept. 28, 2021, grocers saw a 6.8% decrease in online grocery sales compared to the same period in 2020.
Brick Meets Click recently finished its yearly tracking of total online grocery sales for 2021, showing a total of $8.9 billion in sales during December as over 69 million households shopped online.
The Brick Meets Click eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave, sponsored by Mercatus, Hussmann Corporation, and Cardlytics showed that a 3.1% decrease in orders combined with a 3.9% decline in the average order value contributed to the drop in sales on a year-over-year basis.
Based on online transactional data linked to non-personal identified households across nearly 950 stores from 45 U.S. grocery chains, the study is the largest independently conducted online grocery benchmarking initiative completed to date.
“We know from our monthly eGrocery shopping survey that Mass is driving the online grocery sales gains in the broader U.S. market,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “Benchmarking is incredibly valuable because it enables Grocery retailers to compare their performance versus their peers to identify improvement opportunities."
The first of the initiative’s three reports releases this week and focuses on Topline Performance Findings, including key causal factors that can impact performance, such as how long a service has operated, what services are offered by each store, and where the store operates. The initiative revealed three main findings:
First, 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. Prior to COVID, Brick Meets Click documented a strong and positive correlation between sales and the age of the service.
Second, 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. In total, delivery accounted for over 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.
Finally, 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. Part One, Top-line Performance Findings, releases this week, followed by a public webinar, featuring Bishop and Sullentrup on Thursday, Feb. 3 at 1 pm CT.
Part Two, Key Customer Metrics, releases in mid-February and focuses on key customer metrics, ranging from acquisition and churn rates to buying patterns by customer cohort and more, supported by additional perspective from Cardlytics.
Part Three, 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.