“While most people recognized that the pandemic was a catalyst for buying groceries online, few could fully anticipate the implications of that surge,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “Now, four years after COVID-19 first impacted our everyday lives, eGrocery in the U.S. looks very different from both a contribution and growth perspective, and this will impact how grocers and others expand and drive profitability in their respective businesses moving forward.”

From a contribution perspective, Pickup and Delivery share has grown at the expense of Ship-to-Home. Pickup, which accounted for less than one-third of eGrocery sales in 2019, quickly moved to the top spot when the pandemic started — and it has stayed there ever since. Delivery, which represented one-quarter of all online sales in 2019, experienced an even larger jump in market share, to 39.1 percent.

Online grocery sales for March peaked in 2021 and have declined or been flat on a year-over-year basis since then. The ongoing research shows that the size of the online grocery customer pool has become more well-defined and that future growth will likely happen more gradually. In March 2024, the total eGrocery customer pool (which consists of active and lapsed or infrequent users), expanded to include 78.6 percent of all U.S. households. At the end of the first month of the pandemic in 2020, online grocery household penetration finished at 70.8 percent.

The overall eGrocery Monthly Active User base as a share of total households more than doubled at the start of COVID-19, finishing March 2020 at 57.5 percent, the share of MAUs since then has generally remained in the 50 percent range.

Competition online for the active customer has also gotten more intense for supermarkets — especially from Walmart. Before COVID-19, only 15 percent of the customers who bought online from grocery (which includes supermarket and hard discount) also completed an online grocery order from a mass retailer during the same month. For March 2024, that cross-shopping rate stands at nearly 27 percent as reduced purchasing power continues to motivate some households to change where they buy groceries.

"Helping customers build their basket of goods by using tactics like personalized offers or targeted deals is not just key to growing sales but also to improving the chances that they’ll come back again,” said Mark Fairhurst, global chief growth officer at Mercatus. “For today’s grocers, keeping your online customers engaged is more important than ever as growth is now more likely derived from increased order frequency and/or spend per order.” 

Another challenge for most brick-and-mortar grocers is building a mobile app that assists customers as they shop, whether that’s online or in-store. Mass retailers, like Walmart and Target, have already invested heavily in enhancing the perceived value from using their mobile apps — and it shows.

The latest research found that 76 percent of households that primarily buy groceries from Walmart and who also buy groceries online completed one or more eGrocery orders with Walmart during March 2024. For the households that primarily shop at a supermarket and buy groceries online, only 60 percent of those households bought groceries online from a Supermarket.