Dive Brief:
- Grocery e-commerce sales surged nearly 17% in January compared with the same month in 2024, to $10 billion, according to statistics released Tuesday by Brick Meets Click and Mercatus.
- Delivery gained market share in January on a year-over-year basis while pickup lost ground, with promotions by Walmart on delivery services playing a key role in leading that channel ahead, Brick Meets Click said.
- Delivery’s strong showing in January continued a trend that helped define the online grocery sector as 2024 came to a close.
Dive Insight:
Discounts on memberships and subscriptions fueled strong growth in the number of shoppers who placed delivery orders and in how frequently people used the fulfillment method, according to Brick Meets Click. The value of the average delivery order also moved up last month.
Walmart, for example, offered access to its Walmart+ membership program for half the normal price for several weeks at the end of 2024.
“The ongoing waves of promotional tactics are having the intended positive impact on frequency and spend, and they are also increasing retention and share of wallet, which will make growth for their rivals more challenging going forward,” Brick Meets Click partner David Bishop said in a statement.
Delivery sales grew by about 37%, to $4.1 billion, while the pickup channel was up 4%, to $4.2 billion. Ship-to-home sales moved ahead by 9% to reach $1.6 billion.
The delivery channel accounted for 41% of online grocery sales last month, up more than 6 percentage points year over year. On the other hand, pickup’s share of the market slipped by 5 percentage points, to 42%, as stronger average order values weren’t enough to fully offset a drag caused by a smaller user base and reduced order frequency.
The ship-to-home segment was responsible for around 16% of digital grocery sales in January. That figure was down about 1 percentage point compared with the same month last year.
The figures are drawn from a survey of 1,691 shoppers Brick Meets Click fielded Jan. 30-31.
Brick Meets Click added that half of shoppers who use online grocery services regularly, known as monthly active users, have consistently directed business to mass retailers since early 2022. By contrast, supermarkets have consistently served only a third of monthly active users during that period, according to the firm’s research.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the year Brick Meets Click’s research compared January’s online grocery sales with. Grocery e-commerce sales surged nearly 17% in January compared with the same month in 2024.
