Online grocery shopping more popular than ever, according to new survey from Chicory
Digital shopping marketing platform Chicory has released its latest survey on online grocery usership in 2022. The survey of over 1,000 shoppers revealed several takeaways that are of use to private brand retailers.
“After March of 2020, we witnessed digital grocery explode,” said Chicory. “Then, in 2021, usership continued to grow, even surpassing the height of the 2020 boom. Now, using 1,017 responses collected from our third annual survey in January 2022, we’re looking at the current state of online grocery usership, how it compares to the years prior and what it means for the grocery industry as we navigate the year ahead.”
According to the survey, online grocery shopping is more popular now that it was at the height of the pandemic. 72% of shoppers said they purchased groceries online in the past 90 days, which would have included holiday grocery shopping. Digital grocery adoption has steadily increased over the past two years, with the largest jump in adoption occurring between January 2020 and April 2020, when the pandemic began. January 2021’s survey respondents purchased groceries online the most over a 60-day period, at 70.27%.
46% of respondents said the leading driver of ordering groceries online is convenience and/or time constraints. Chicory notes that this speaks to “evolving consumer expectations,” which are increasingly centered around convenience and flexibility. Product availability or accessibility comes in as the second-most popular driver at 19.3%. Less than 10% of respondents reported health/safety concerns as their primary driver of ordering groceries online, showing that online grocery shopping is not just a byproduct of the pandemic.
Over 52% of 2022 respondents said they placed online grocery orders at least once a week. Special occasions or holidays, the lowest order-placement cadence, has seen the largest decline in response popularity since January 2020, with just 14% of respondents selecting that option this year. Of shoppers who reported adding groceries to their cart daily, 90% reported placing an online order at least weekly.
As far as the demographics of online grocery shoppers, men and women were fairly matched in their add-to-cart and order-placement behaviors, with 68% of women and 67% of men adding products to their carts at least once a week. Approximately 11% of Chicory’s youngest respondents (18-29 year olds) and 9% of their oldest respondents (60+ year olds) place online grocery orders more than once a week, a difference of 2%.
The full report from Chicroy can be found here.