The total US online grocery market ended July 2024 with $7.9 billion in monthly sales, a 9.2% increase over last year. Delivery sales surged 22% in July, aided by continued promotional efforts. Ship-to-Home also posted strong results, climbing 6%, and Pickup held steady year-over-year, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopper Survey fielded July 30-31, 2024.

Delivery’s dramatic gains in July benefited from ongoing efforts by key players to grow their delivery businesses over the last several months. Walmart promoted a 50% discount on its Walmart+ membership in mid-July that lowered the annual fee from $98 to $49 after offering the same deal in May. Meanwhile, Instacart promoted an 80% discount on its annual membership. Both offers are contributing to growth in Delivery users and order frequency.

“Walmart and Instacart aren’t the only players using deep discounts to boost delivery demand,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “Amazon, for example, in July offered a 90-day free Prime membership trial instead of the usual 30 days, along with unlimited grocery delivery. Similarly, DoorDash and Uber Eats are maintaining low or no delivery fees to increase their market share.”

Looking at trends in monthly active users (MAUs) by format and receiving method shows how the market is shifting. Both Supermarkets and Mass saw year-over-year increases in their MAU bases in July. Supermarket’s base grew twice as fast as last year, up about 7%, and Mass posted a nearly 8% increase. Trends across the three receiving methods were mixed. Delivery’s MAU base expanded by more than 10% versus last year, Ship-to-Home’s expanded by almost 4%, and Pickup’s contracted slightly, down by less than 2%.

Overall eGrocery order volume for July 2024 rose approximately 5% compared to the prior year. Delivery orders surged nearly 20% in the month, due to both more users and more frequent ordering by those users. Meanwhile, Pickup order volume fell 3% versus July 2023 due to lower order frequency among a contracting MAU base. Growth in Ship-to-Home’s user base offset a dip in order frequency, resulting in a 2% gain in order volume during the month.

Composite spending per order across all three methods (Delivery, Pickup and Ship-to-Home) increased almost 4% in July 2024 compared to a year ago. Average order values (AOV) for Ship-to-Home climbed the most, growing 4% year-over-year, while Pickup and Delivery trailed, increasing by 3% and 2% respectively. AOV for the Mass format finished up over 3% while Supermarkets were flat versus year ago. 

Analysis of the monthly results also found that households with annual incomes under $50K reported declines across the three key metrics – MAU base, order frequency, and AOV – bucking the broader eGrocery growth trends and illustrating how financial pressures are affecting online buying behaviors.

Cross-shopping rates for July 2024 remain elevated as nearly one in three customers continued to buy online from both Grocery and Mass formats during the past month. The share of Grocery customers (which includes both Supermarkets and Hard Discounters) that also received an online grocery order from a Mass retailer finished at 32.1% in July. The share of Grocery customers who received online orders from Walmart reached nearly 22.5%, up 430 bps versus last year, the highest level seen so far in 2024. For Target, the share climbed 100 bps, reaching 14.9%, which is the highest level reached for that retailer during the last two years.