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Walmart captured a record 37% of the U.S. online grocery market during the second quarter of 2024, steadily expanding its share in recent years as traditional supermarkets lose ground, according to the latest Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey.
Since the second quarter of 2021, Walmart’s e-grocery share has surged 880 basis points while supermarkets’ share has shrunk 700 basis points, ending the quarter at 27.3%.
According to the survey, “Walmart’s sales share sales (excluding Sam’s Club) began gaining on supermarkets in early 2022,” driven by the end of the expanded child tax credit, rising food-at-home inflation, and higher interest rates, which led consumers to seek out better deals.
“Walmart’s reputation for low prices helped to attract households that wanted both the convenience of shopping online and ways to save money in this market,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click, in a statement. “The execution of its omnichannel strategy, plus the operational efficiencies aided by incredibly high order demand, has enabled Walmart to consistently deliver the type of experiences that customers expect and to lower its cost to serve online orders at the same time.”
Meanwhile, Target, with an online grocery share of 7% as of Q2 2024, has generated more moderate sales share gains over the last several years, with strong execution, especially in fulfilling pickup orders, and prices between supermarkets and Walmart helping the chain compete in e-grocery.
In grocery delivery, Walmart saw a nearly 8 percentage point jump in share as it’s benefiting from emphasizing first-party delivery services, in part to support the Walmart+ subscription program. Overall, the mass channel captured nearly half of all delivery sales in Q2 2024, up nearly 10 points versus supermarket share.
For in-store or curbside pickup, mass, led by Walmart, claimed a nearly 58% share in Q2 2024 against only 28% share for supermarkets. Pickup continues to be the preferred method for e-commerce grocery sales in the U.S. with a 45.5% share, down 110 basis points year over year.
Insider Intelligence last November predicted that Walmart’s share lead of the online grocery market would increase to 26.9% in 2024 versus Amazon’s 18.5%, again with Walmart gaining significant traction in recent years.
“Increasing inflation has led to more deal-seeking and trade-down behaviors from consumers, which favor Walmart over its competitors such as Target and grocery delivery platforms,” said Brian Lau, forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence. “Of course, having a store within 10 miles of 90% of U.S. households has also helped fuel Walmart’s grocery sales, both offline and online, because it means the company has more curbside and in-store pickup locations available.”
Lau said that although Amazon has “the most rounded out logistics network” to support online grocery, Whole Foods “lacks mass appeal” and the pause on expansion at Amazon Fresh shows that “Amazon is still trying to figure out how to compete with Walmart in the grocery space, both online and offline.”
In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, Walmart’s U.S. online sales grew 22% and e-commerce losses continued to narrow, with net delivery cost per order in the U.S. improving nearly 40%. In the U.S., over the last 12 months, 4.4 billion items were delivered the same or the next day, with about 20% of those delivered in under three hours.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on an analyst call, “Delivery times are getting faster and the cost to delivery is coming down at the same time.”