Customer Spending at Grocery Stores Jumps Amid Pandemic, Even Though Americans Don’t Frequent the Stores

Americans may be grocery shopping less, but that doesn’t mean they are spending less as well.

Data from digital marketing firm Catalina shows that customer spending at grocery stores jumped 6% from $310 to $330 per month on average. However, supermarket trips dropped by nearly 11% compared to 2019.

“Our data scientists and advanced analytics teams have been mining Catalina’s unparalleled Buyer Intelligence Database, which captures up to three years of purchase history and more than two billion Universal Product Codes that are scanned daily in the U.S., to track how buying behavior and decisions have continued to shift since concerns over COVID-19 took hold earlier this year,” said Marta Cyhan, chief marketing officer.

“These real-time insights have helped our retail and brand customers adjust their marketing, media and activation strategies, while also helping to inform their stocking and supply chain decisions,” Cyhan added.

According to Catalina, in reviewing the past six months of data, “shoppers made more trips than average in March as the pandemic set in, then greatly reduced trips in April as they hunkered down at home.”

In August, shoppers made 6.7 trips to the grocery store. This is down 11% from 7.5 trips per month last year. However, they are spending an average of $49.28 per grocery haul this year. This is up from $41.58 in August, which is a 19% increase, says the data.

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