Study reveals online grocery shopping will triple in the next decade
According to the research, 6% of all consumers surveyed say they have been placing online orders more than once a month.
Online grocery in the United States is on the cusp of a major increase in consumer adoption. That’s because e-commerce penetration is expected to at least triple in the next decade, according to new research from Bain & Co., Boston, Mass., and Google, Mountain View, Calif.
The study, “Omnichannel Grocery is Open for Business – and Ready to Grow,” which surveyed more than 8,000 grocery shoppers across the United States, reveals that penetration hovers at a mere 3%. According to the research, that’s because while just 25% of consumers surveyed said they used an online grocery service in the last year, only 26% of those users, or 6% of all consumers, say they have been placing online orders more than once a month.
“Online grocery shopping in the U.S. trails that of other e-commerce categories in large part because our grocery shopping habits are so deeply ingrained, and online grocery retailers haven’t yet convinced customers that grocery shopping online can be a better experience,” says Stephen Caine, a leader in Bain & Co.’s retail practice. “Traditional grocers have decades of experience optimizing their physical stores to align with how shoppers think – training them to navigate store shelves to easily find what they are looking for, making it easy for them to make trade-offs between products and providing inspiration when they want to try something new. Online grocery shopping has not yet found a way to digitally replicate these cues simply and intuitively.”