Online grocery sales top $27 billion in Q3
Online grocery sales were up nearly 15% in the third quarter of 2024, fueled by home delivery sales which increased even more year-over-year.
That’s according to the newest data from the latest U.S. eGrocery Market Share Report, powered by data from the monthly Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey. Online grocery sales in the United States rose by 13.8% to $27.4 billion in the third quarter of this year, compared to $24.0 billion for the same period in 2023. Online grocery sales totaled $7.9 billion in July, $9.9 billion in August and $9.5 billion for September 2024.
All three receiving methods (delivery, ship-to-home, pickup) contributed to the overall growth for the quarter, but to varying degrees. Ship-to-home posted a gain of 15%, and pickup gained approximately 5%. However, delivery had 25% year-over-year sales growth after posting a nearly 6% decline during the prior year.
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The mass retail format continued to gain online grocery market share, driven by the delivery and ship-to-home segments, while supermarkets saw ongoing declines in the quarter. In delivery, mass increased its sales share by 390 basis points year-over-year, reaching 52.7% in the third quarter, while supermarkets slid 250 basis points to just under 38% in the period.
Mass also improved its position in the ship-to-home segment, growing its share by 150 basis points to 16.4%, which Brick Meets Click says was mainly at the expense of Amazon, which finished at 50.1%, down 100 basis points from the previous year. For pickup, mass’ share slipped slightly as it fell 70 bps year-over-year, capturing 56.1% of the method’s overall sales, which experts say is due to the membership push by Walmart that is boosting demand for delivery.
“The strong results for eGrocery underscore the importance of strengthening the customer value proposition to align better with the evolving expectations associated with shopping online for groceries,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “Mass, and Walmart in particular, have demonstrated the value of better understanding online shoppers’ preferences while also leveraging its vast store network and digital reach to grow faster than the overall market.”
The monthly active user (MAU) base, which includes all methods and retail formats, grew from 54% last year to 56% in the third quarter this year, helping to drive online grocery’s gains. In addition, the proportion of MAUs that spent 25% or more of their weekly grocery budget online increased by over three percentage points versus the same quarter a year earlier.
The share of total grocery spending going online also resumed its upward trajectory, climbing to 14.6% in the third quarter of this year, after pulling back in the year-ago period. The combined share that pickup and delivery contributed to online grocery sales increased by 110 basis points over the previous year, finishing at 12.0%.
According to Brick Meets Click, the challenges will likely continue for supermarkets as a larger share of their MAUs choose to cross-shop for groceries online from mass. In the third quarter, one-third of supermarket MAUs also shopped at mass retailers during the same month, reflecting an increase of 130 basis points from the prior year and more than double the rate in 2019 when it was under 15%.
“To compete effectively against giants like Walmart, Supermarkets must deepen their customer connections and enhance their service,” said Mark Fairhurst, chief growth officer at Mercatus. “Leveraging customer insights is crucial for creating personalized experiences and offering targeted savings to customers, but that's only possible when retailers can effectively operationalize the data."
