Although many consumers have tested the waters, online grocery shopping is far from routine. “It’s a pretty small fraction of the population that has developed any sort of habit around it,” said Stephen Caine, partner and head of the retail practice at Bain & Co. “[There’s] a good degree of trial, but the problem is frequency.”
He added that even for those who would be considered heavy online grocery users, ecommerce still accounts for a minority of their overall shopping trips. “For them, it is still once—maybe twice—a month. Whereas, we know the average number of shopping trips for any typical household is closer to 10 to 12 per month.”
Caine’s observations comport with research from a 2018 shopper survey from Mercatus, which found that over a three-month period, only 13% of shoppers had ordered their groceries online at least three times, and just 7% had done so more than six times.