E-commerce grocery sales in the U.S. continued their upswing during the third quarter of 2024, rising by a hefty 13.8 percent year over year to USD 27.4 billion (EUR 25.2 billion), according to a new report.
According to the Q3 2024 U.S. eGrocery Market Share Report, which references data from Brick Meets Click and Mercatus’s Grocery Shopping Survey, mass market retailers such as Walmart and Target continued to gain market share in the e-commerce space.
The mass market retail segment increased its e-commerce sales share by 390 basis points year over year, reaching 52.7 percent of e-commerce sales in the third quarter, while the supermarkets segment slid 250 basis points, taking up nearly 38 percent of the market.
The mass market retail channel also improved its position in the ship-to-home segment, growing its share by 150 basis points to 16.4 percent, primarily at the expense of Amazon, which finished at 50.1 percent – down 100 basis points from the previous year, according to the report.
“The strong results underscore the importance of strengthening the customer value proposition to align better with the evolving expectations associated with shopping online for groceries,” Brick Meets Click Partner David Bishop said. “Mass [retailers], 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.”
Lower-income households remain Walmart’s core online grocery customer segment, but a growing base of affluent households played a vital role in driving Walmart’s strong growth through the first half of 2024, according to a separate Brick Meets Click report: “Profiling the Online Shopper: eGrocery Purchase Patterns in the U.S.”
Households making less than USD 50,000 (EUR 46,000) annually accounted for 41 percent of Walmart’s average monthly active users (aMAUs), compared to 36 percent for hard discount stores, 30 percent for supermarkets, and 28 percent for Target.
However, Walmart’s most affluent segment – households making USD 200,000 (EUR 185,000) or more in annual income – expanded to 8 percent of its customer base, growing almost five times faster than the 4 percent year-over-year growth for its overall aMAU base, Brick Meets Click said in a press release.
“Walmart’s growth in households making USD 200,000-plus per year shows that the ‘flight to value’ has even affected how this income group shops for groceries,” Bishop said. “Affluent households that shop online for groceries at Walmart spend 150 percent more each month than households in the lowest income bracket, making them a very attractive customer segment to target and win over.”
Challenges will likely continue for supermarkets in the e-commerce space, as a larger share of their MAUS choose to cross-shop for groceries online from the mass retail segment, according to Brick Meets Click. Around one-third of supermarket MAUs also shopped at mass retailers during the same month during the third quarter, reflecting an increase of 130 basis points from the prior year and more than double the rate seen in 2019, when it was under 15 percent.
