March 2021 online spending up 37% over March 2020, when social distancing was beginning.

Key Takeaways

• Analysis of 1.2 million transactions from over 30 grocery stores shows online spend in March 2021 was 37% higher than spend in March 2020

Over a year ago, when COVID-19 first began making waves in the United States, online grocery took off in a really big way. As our earlier study showed, online grocery sales shot up 90% from March 2, 2020 to April 16, 2020. However as states begin reopening and people get vaccinated en masse, have consumers continued to use online grocery at the same pace? To find out, Edison Trends took a deep dive into over 1.2 million transactions.

How have consumer spend and orders in online grocery changed in 2021?

Figure 1: Chart shows online spend and orders on grocery delivery/pickup by day from February 1, 2020 - April 4, 2021, according to Edison Trends. Note: the highest spend and number of orders per day were each set to 100, and all other values scaled accordingly. This analysis was based on over 1.2 million transactions from over 30 grocery stores such as Kroger, H-E-B and Albertsons, as well as Instacart, Shipt, Amazon Fresh and Walmart Grocery.

Spending on online grocery orders is in a very different place than it was a year ago. The average amount spent per day in February 2021 was 88% higher than that of February 2020, while March 2021 spending was 37% higher than it had been in March 2020, when social distancing was beginning.

The highest day of online grocery spending so far in 2021 has been January 30th. The highest day of online grocery orders placed so far in 2021 was January 24th.

As the market evolves, we will continue to stay on top of the latest trends. To learn more about how Edison Trends can help your business, contact us at bizdev@edison.tech. For more up-to-date insights in the e-commerce space, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter at @EdisonTrends.

*The data shown is based on a sample of anonymized and aggregated e-receipts from millions of consumers in the United States.