NEW YORK – Digital shopper marketing platform Chicory has released the results to its newest national grocery consumer research study, showing changes in online grocery from pre-pandemic to present. 

The new data shows that while Walmart and Amazon still sit at the front of online grocery success (with 55% and 40% usage levels, respectively), the two retailers actually lost market share (12% and 30%, respectively) from January to April 2020, with slight recoveries between then and now. Today, Target, Kroger and Instacart command nearly the same market share at 23%, 22% and 21% respectively. 

From pre-COVID-19 to present, here is how much market share shifted for each retailer: 

  • Walmart: -1.27% Chicory

  • Amazon: +17.49% 

  • Kroger: +17.68% 

  • Instacart: +27.75% 

  • Shop & Shop/Giant Foods: +44.01% 

  • Shipt: +67.70% 

  • Albertsons/Safeway: +20.23% 

“Interestingly, Shipt, Stop & Shop and Giant Foods had the largest increases in market share compared to other retailers from pre-COVID-19 to present,” said Yuni Sameshima, Chicory’s chief executive officer and co-founder. “This may be because while all other retailers were well underway with ecommerce development, Stop & Shop, Giant Foods and Shipt were still ramping up ecommerce awareness and development. And when consumers were confronted with limited retailer availability for purchasing groceries online, they turned to alternative choices that they hadn’t considered before.”

Online grocery usership continues to grow, with October exceeding levels from all other quarters, which Chicory said indicates a new normal here to stay. October usership exceeds the previous quarter by 6.39% and even exceeds usage in April by 1.41%. In fact, even as more and more restaurants reopen and return to fuller function, 64% of consumers are ordering groceries online and still cooking from home. 

Shoppers are also taking advantage of online shopping more often than they were before. In October 2020, nearly 57% of online shoppers were ordering at least once a week or more and 43% added to their carts every few weeks. This indicates that, overall, since pre-pandemic, more consumers are treating online grocery services as their regular weekly shop. 

Online grocery spending per purchase, however, has been down in October. This is likely due to the end of the panic-buying phase experienced earlier in the year. Approximately 15% more shoppers now say they spend $25 - $50 per order, as compared to last quarter. Similarly, close to 10% fewer shoppers responded that they spend $50-$75 per order; and close to 21% fewer shoppers responded that they spend more than $100 per order.