Omnichannel Shoppers Spend Much More Than Single-Channel Shoppers

The Rise of Digital in Grocery Sales

Digital grocery sales continue to increase as grocers invest to meet customer expectations for a seamless, accurate, and timely shopping experience.

New research from Grocery Doppio reports that while digital has become a complete shopping option, omnichannel shoppers have emerged as the customer gold standard, spending more than single-channel shoppers.

According to Grocery Doppio’s “The Omnichannel Grocery Shopper” report, digital sales will continue to rise over the next few years and are predicted to account for 16.1% of all grocery sales by 2027. The percentage of digital grocery sales has increased nearly fivefold since 2018, when it accounted for just 2.7% of sales. Today digital accounts for 12.8% of total grocery revenue.

Digital Influence on Grocery Sales

While the percentage of current digital sales (12.8%) accounts for a relatively small piece of grocers’ overall revenue, digital plays a huge role in influencing sales. From January till September of this year, 69% of all grocery sales were digitally influenced, accounting for a massive $470 billion in sales.

Omnichannel Shoppers: Spending Patterns

With so much revenue up for grabs, grocers must continue to invest in and grow their digital capabilities to ensure they get their fair share of the increasingly large digital pie. But where should they focus their efforts?

According to one of the report's critical findings, omnichannel shoppers spend 1.5x more than single-channel shoppers. To capitalize, grocers must create a streamlined omnichannel environment where shoppers can quickly shift from in-person to digital shopping and vice versa.

According to the report, multi-channel shoppers spend, on average, $1,043 per month on groceries, while online-only shoppers spend $659 and in-store-only shoppers spend $669.

Characteristics of Omnichannel Shoppers

“Most omnichannel shoppers are in four-plus member households, and their overall spend is typically higher,” says Incisiv’s chief insight officer, Gaurav Pant. “They are not super ’name brand’ focused. In fact, close to half have traded for private brands in the last year. Simply put, the omnichannel shopper is the American household, and their loyalty is up for grabs.”

Shopper Behavior and Loyalty Trends

At first blush, the jarring statistic that omnichannel shoppers spend 50% more than their non-omnichannel counterparts could be dismissed as a simple correlation between high-value family shoppers and their preference for multi-channel shopping. However, a deeper dive into shopper behavior tells a different story.

“Overall family spend and loyalty are higher when they shop omnichannel,” adds Pant. “There are plenty of families that aren’t omnichannel, and they spend less than omnichannel families on average.”

Churn Drivers in the Grocery Sector

Regarding shopper loyalty, nothing compares to an in-store-only shopper. According to the report, this traditional customer set will endure more than five negative experiences before making a change. Conversely, online-only shoppers are the ficklest, churning to a new grocer after just one bad experience (1.3 to be specific).

Omnichannel shoppers represent a happy medium. They will endure 4.2 bad experiences before taking their business elsewhere. Converting an online-only shopper to an omnichannel shopper reduces churn by 3x.

What qualifies as a bad experience? Well, that can vary from customer to customer, but there are five negative experiences that are the biggest drivers of churn: inventory issues, checkout woes, slow and/or complicated pickup, subpar customer support, and substitution issues. Expectations haven’t changed much with the introduction of the new-age, omnichannel shopping experience — provide customers what they want, when they want it, seamlessly, and grocers have a chance to win their long-term loyalty.

Conclusion and Report Access

Of note, however, is that price was not among the top five reasons for customer churn, highlighting the fact that today’s shoppers value the experience above all else.

Check out the full report for free here, and explore the current state of the omnichannel grocer shopper in greater detail.