The eCommerce grocery market is in full blossom. According to eMarketer, in the US alone, ecommerce grocery sales will exceed $100 billion sometime in 2021. This means they will account for an impressive 12.4% of entire eCommerce purchases throughout the country.
Seeing this boom in grocery app interest, we decided to reach out to nine experts, asking them about their grocery industry trends predictions for 2021 and beyond. Here’s what they told us.
Let’s begin with the first opinion from Brent Shelton of eCommerce SaaS Smarty.
Brent Shelton, VP & Media Relations for Smarty
According to a Brand Loyalty Study from Smarty, brand loyalty in America remains strong, but it’s not unconditional. Consumers are most loyal to grocery brands (Albertsons, Kroger) and electronics brands (Apple, AT&T, Samsung). But while 73% say they have brand loyalty, 47% will abandon their loyalty if they find better quality from a competing brand, and another 45% will try other brands if their preferred brand becomes too expensive.
In general, Americans overall reported spending the most money on groceries and household essentials during the pandemic. In fact, Americans say they’re spending on average $100-$400 for groceries a month. There’s also been an uptick in subscriptions, with many brands and retailers moving toward a subscription-based business model. Americans say they have 2-3 subscriptions (33.9%) related to shopping at Walmart+, Amazon Prime, and Costco.
This data underscores that Americans are eager to adopt a subscription-based model if it will benefit them.
Andrei Vasilescu, CEO and Digital Marketing Specialist at DontPayFull
COVID-19 pandemic has taught people the hard way to think twice before spending. Due to greatly reduced income, consumers all over the world have focused on purchasing mainly the essential things from stores. Many consumers have even reduced the consumption of essential grocery things and have learned the art of value-based shopping.
Consumers are purchasing their groceries based on their prices. Value of a product is the most powerful driving force to make a purchase from an online grocery store. Consumers who liked to stick to their brands before the pandemic are not hesitating to try new brands for better prices. Loyalty of the customers is now history because consumers are looking to save their money while shopping from online groceries. Switching to other online stores for only a few bucks is now very common practice of grocery consumers. They are subscribing to lesser-known grocery stores only to save their money. In addition to that, many consumers are now trying to help the local businesses instead of top grocery brands and this is another big reason for choosing the local brands.
Lucas Travis of Inboard Skate presents a slightly different view, stating that, when it comes to eGrocery trends, one-stop shopping wins over value-based purchases.
Lucas Travis, Founder of Inboard Skate
Another online grocery shopping trend I have noticed is the shift in customer behavior to one-stop store shops. People now find it more convenient to shop in stores that have all their needs, regardless of brands or other factors that matter in the past such as the shop location or ambiance. Consumers are fast-paced and very adaptive when it comes to habits, such as this quick transition too in doing their shopping or grocery online. Nowadays what matters is that you are complete with all the needs, and not that it's cheap, or that it's a more expensive brand. It all boils down to completing your needs and requisites before jumping in for luxury.
Cody Iverson, Co-founder and CEO at Viscap Media
In the eGrocery business, making your business model accessible and convenient for your customers is the most important factor in determining who will buy your products, and how often. It’s also important to continuously advertise for these businesses, as the pandemic has started to close, meaning that more people will want to go physically into stores again. It’s the job of the eGrocery industry to remind people why they purchased from there in the first place- so they had more time to do other things besides grocery shop.
Tony Martins, Founder at Profitable Venture
EGrocery stores have been on a steady rise over the last 10 years, but the sudden changes forced on us during the pandemic months caused a massive spike in online grocery shopping. This, in turn, came along with other changes in consumer behavior.
One of the biggest changes in behavior is the shift of when people are doing their grocery shopping. As more people began working from home, they realized the convenience that eGrocery shopping could offer them. Egrocery services like Instacart and PeaPod noted a significant difference in the number of orders they got during the week. Since people are working from home, they have the ability to take 20 minutes during the day to do their weekly shop online.
Businesses that have successfully leveraged this shift have managed to drastically increase their market share. Instacart currently enjoys more than 50% of all the eGrocery purchases in North America.
Alexander Rådahl Ahlsen, Senior User Experience designer at Radahl
Ahlsen believes that we’re in the midst of a grocery revolution. To back this up, he shares some numbers from Invespcro:
“With about 93 percent of Americans having Internet access, eGrocery growth is expected to continue at a rapid pace by 2021. The growing popularity of online services among US consumers, as well as the demographic shift to younger generations (especially the Millennial generation, where 47% of eGrocery shoppers are millennials), have driven this trend.
It is estimated that by 2022, more than 70% of Americans will buy groceries online monthly. At the moment, Amazon is the leader in the space, with an estimated 36% of the eGrocery space, but Walmart is right behind, with an estimated 26%”.
Andrew Priobrazhenskyi, CEO at DiscountReactor
The major shift in consumer behavior I have witnessed is that with the decrease in shopping frequency, the amount customers purchase in one go has increased considerably. Now that consumers don’t go out of the house as much and seek to buy online, they aim to get as many groceries as possible in one online buying session. With that comes higher expectations for consumers, and less margin for error for retailers; one bad experience might be enough for customers to shift to competition.
Michael Hammelburger, CEO at Sales Therapy
Our clients have informed us that the transition to BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-Up In Store) business model has indeed picked up during the pandemic period. However, not all retailers have adjusted very well to this transition because some SMBs are still scrambling when it comes to fulfilling their technological and logistical requirements. However, they're bracing for the surge of orders during the holiday season and are trying to augment their staff to meet orders on time. Some of the concerns they're facing include IT solutions and customer support strategies.
James Burghes at Spree Commerce
One eCommerce grocery trend is the rise of the local delivery marketplace. While there are a few prominent examples that have been around for some time now, such as UberEats and Instacart, there are many lesser-known examples that have popped up within the last few years. In recent times, more and more businesses are shifting their online focus to smaller, localized markets in an effort to enhance local economies, support communities, and reduce carbon footprints. Partially inspired by the pandemic, these businesses also facilitate the safe purchase of goods by allowing consumers to remain socially distanced.As the trend grows, there is an ever-increasing demand for such marketplaces, and with that, a need for robust eCommerce marketplace solutions. But what exactly is required from a solution to make it suitable for a local delivery marketplace? An absolutely essential aspect is mobile UX due to many people using their mobile devices to order food online. The headless eCommerce route is one to consider.
Hopefully by reading our online grocery shopping trends’ article we’ve given you some inspiration before you jump on a journey to creating your own grocery app. If you need a bit more guidance then reach out to us. We will happily discuss how we could help you develop a well-performing grocery app.
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