Relationship Is Key When It Comes to Revenue, New Research Says

According to new research from Brick Meets Click, relationship is key when it comes to revenue. So much so that during a four-week period examined by Brick Meets Click for its eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave, established customers drove 3.5 times more e-grocery revenue than new ones did.

It also found that established customers—those who have shopped online with a grocer for more than 60 weeks—spent 2.4 times more than new customers who started shopping that same grocer within the past four weeks.

“Grocers need to build more meaningful engagement with their online customers,” said David Bishop, partner with Brick Meets Click, in a statement. “The market has contracted as expected, but the fact that nearly three-quarters of the customers that shopped online last year have lapsed and nearly two-thirds of the customers today are considered new to the grocer’s service simply underscores that those attracted to shopping this way are still in search of a service they deem acceptable compared to the alternatives.”

The eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave, sponsored by Cardlytics, Mercatus and Hussmann, resumed the Brick Meets Click initiative started in 2016 but paused in 2020 due to the pandemic. The annual initiative based on online POS data provided by participating retailers, The Brick Meets Click eGrocery Performance Benchmarking began in 2016 with 17 grocery store banners and has grown to 45 banners, and nearly 950 stores, for 2021. The 2021 report generated insights based on an analysis of comparable 12-week periods during 2021 and 2020, examining performance across three four-week periods (eight, nine and 10), ending with Sept. 28, 2021. The benchmarks are based on online transactional data linked to non-personal identified households.

“Consumers’ brand and channel preference has been more difficult than ever to predict as a result of the pandemic,” said Mike Novosel, head of grocery for Cardlytics, in a statement. “We focus on helping brands understand whole wallet behavior through our access to $3.5 trillion of annual consumer spend data, and work with them to identify who is not as loyal as suspected, or most inclined to engage with them digitally, then reach them through their bank, where spending is top of mind, to incent behavioral change.”

The second of the three-part benchmarking report releases this week and focuses on customer metrics. What follows are key insights from the analysis of three corresponding four-week periods in 2020 and 2021:

The Brick Meets Click eGrocery Performance Benchmarking 2021 Wave’s complete findings is being released in a series of three reports: part one, Top-line Performance Findings, was released in late January; part two, Key Customer Metrics, will release in late February, followed by a public webinar featuring Bishop of Brick Meets Click and Novosel of Cardlytics on March 10 at 1 p.m. CST; and part three, Top-Quartile Analysis, which releases in late March and focuses on revealing factors and practices that show grocers how they can further improve performance, with practical guidance from Mercatus.