Which grocers are best-positioned heading toward 2053?

Amazon, H-E-B, Costco, Sam’s Club and Walmart are best-positioned to be the grocery retailers of the future—that is, at least 30 years into the future, according to an analysis by customer data science specialist dunnhumby.  

Dunnhumby's “Grocery 2053: A Data-Driven Gaze into The Future” report estimated that the U.S. grocery market will double in size to $1.9 trillion by 2053.

Grocers will succeed or fail based on “their ability to align themselves to the dominant demographic, cultural, economic, and technological trends that will slowly reshape the market context over decades to come,” according to Matt O’Grady, president of the Americas for dunnhumby.  

“The aim of our report is to help retailers understand what shopper values that will shape the decades to come and offer a framework of how to transform their organizations over time,” O’Grady noted.  

Generation Z and Generation Y “will be central to how the market evolves over the next three decades,” dunnhumby said. Having survived the Great Recession in 2008 and the pandemic, these two population groups are most concerned about the economy and personal finances.  

Worries about money will be the most important long-term trend and stands to impact consumer behavior for the next three decades, the report said.  

“Only when income exceeds $150,000 per year do finances even out, with health and the environment as sources of stress for consumers. And the younger the consumers, the more they tend to be stressed with finances, both long-term and day-to-day,” dunnhumby observed. 

It might not come as a surprise then that discount stores and other retailers with strong value propositions are expected to benefit most from those trends. Grocers best-positioned for the fiscal conservatism trend, in order, are Lidl, Food 4 Less, Aldi, Costco, Fry’s, Amazon, BJ’s Wholesale Club, H-E-B, ShopRite and WinCo Foods.  

Dunnhumby's report identified Harris Teeter, Wegmans Food Markets, Publix Super Markets and Sprouts Farmers Market as the most vulnerable supermarket chains in relation to that trend.

Health and wellness was flagged as the second-most-important trend, as 80% of shoppers will look to buy healthier foods at the grocery store, the study revealed. Price is a barrier for 60% of these shoppers.

“Consumers with higher incomes are more likely to regularly choose healthy foods when shopping," dunnhumby explained. "Younger customers care more about their mental health, whereas older customers care about their physical health."

Integrating new consumer-friendly technologies came in as the third key trend to consider, followed by values-based consumption, which includes factors such as sustainability and the welfare of store employees.