Online grocery shopping has been around for years but recently started gaining steam among consumers around the world. The increasing prevalence of online grocery retailers has caused more and more people to ask the question, “why get in the car and drive all the way down to the grocery store when I can have fresh groceries delivered to my house at the click of a button?” In 2018, around 547 million global consumers
, a figure which has grown to over 1.4 billion by 2023.
A generational divide in grocery delivery
As with everything digital, younger generations are driving the shift to e-commerce in various sectors, and grocery delivery is no exception. There is a significant amount of variation in online grocery shopping habits across generations. Millennials have the
highest share of online grocery shoppers in the United States, with 65 percent of them purchasing groceries online on a monthly basis in 2023. In comparison, almost a quarter of Baby Boomers resorted to digital channels that frequently. Similar generational divides are observed in
France,
Germany, and
Sweden.
Grocery shopping in times of inflation
Many consumers globally are tightening their belts amid the cost-of-living crisis. In Mexico for instance, approximately two-thirds of consumers reported
replacing products with cheaper brands due to rising inflation. Similarly, in Canada, nearly half of surveyed consumers in 2022 reported
switching to cheaper, low quality brands as a result of increasing food prices. In the United States, the
average online grocery inflation rate reached 13.6 percent in October 2022, prompting many consumers to change their food shopping behavior accordingly. In a survey conducted that same month, approximately 36 percent of surveyed Americans reported
cutting back on meat, poultry, and fish due to rising prices.
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