Always On: The Online Grocery Shopper

Welcome to the first edition of Always On, your weekly deep dive into the brand and audience trends shaping headlines — and strategies.

Each week, we’ll dig into a brand or audience trend you need to know about, tapping into Morning Consult Intelligence, our always-on insights platform powered by 15,000 daily surveys across 40+ countries. That means thousands of brands, audience deep dives, and enough fresh data to make your spreadsheets jealous. Sign-up here to get this email sent to you directly every week.

This week’s topic: The online grocery shopper.

Remember the great sourdough craze of 2020? While most pandemic fads have fizzled out (RIP DIY haircuts), online grocery shopping has proven it’s more than just a phase.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the online grocery shopper. Since 2016, we’ve collected over 200,000 survey interviews on these digital cart-fillers (which we're defining below as U.S. adults who buy groceries online about weekly), and uncovered some tasty insights.

Fast Facts About Online Grocery Shoppers

Amazon Prime Dominates
We track 15 food delivery services in Morning Consult Intelligence, and Amazon Prime tops the list for online grocery shoppers — but DoorDash comes in second. It’s a crowded market, with competitors like Instacart, UberEATS and more.

They’re much more likely to watch HBO
Online grocery shoppers are 21 points more likely to be watching HBO than the general population.

They also love takeout
59% of this demographic also uses a meal delivery service like DoorDash or GrubHub. That’s 24 points higher than the general population.

And are more likely to be new parents
Nine percent of them had a child in the past year, 3 points more than the general population.

How They Think

Let’s talk about the psychographics of online grocery shoppers. We track dozens of different psychographic traits to better understand how certain cohorts think and perceive the world around them. Here’s what sets online grocery shoppers apart:

• Techno trailblazers: They’re 17 points more than the general population to try new technology
• Goal-oriented: They’re 11 points more likely than the general population to set goals
• Financially optimistic: 41% think their personal finances will be better off in 12 months, which is six points higher than the general population

Let's Go Deeper

So, where is this audience shopping? Well, obviously at home on their computers or phones. Kidding — let’s dive into their favorite grocery stores.

It’s not a shocker that Aldi leads this list, with its more than 2,400 locations nationwide. But Kroger is not far behind, despite having roughly half the locations. For those of you who already have access to Morning Consult Intelligence, we built this brand ranking by using Morning Consult’s Brand Rankings Export tool, sorting by total favorability and filtering for a custom audience of people who buy groceries online about once a week. (Don’t have access to Morning Consult Intelligence? Contact us here).

Want to see these rankings broken down by generation for the general population? Check out our new report in Morning Consult Pro and flip to page 15!

Extra Credit

How Americans Shop for Groceries (Morning Consult Pro): This report examines the current state of shopper behaviors in the category and analyzes what they mean for brands in the industry.

Online Grocery Shopping Is on the Rise (Morning Consult Pro): Millennials, urban dwellers and high income households use online grocery shopping options at disproportionately higher rates.

How Grocery Stores Should Respond to the Growth of Online Markets (Harvard Business Review): Grocery retailers face a challenge: What to do with the online channel, which is growing and popular with a segment of their customers but is hugely unprofitable?