Walmart attracting more affluent grocery shoppers online

The number of affluent customers shopping Walmart online for groceries continues to grow.

In fact, those making more than $200,000 a year played a vital role in driving the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer’s strong growth through the first half of 2024, according to the latest edition of Profiling the Online Shopper: eGrocery Purchase Patterns in the U.S. by Brick Meets Click sponsored by Mercatus.

The report looks at shoppers of four different types of stores—supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and hard discount—and analyzes how household penetration, spending, and order frequency for online grocery have shifted year over year.

Walmart’s core online customer continues to be lower-income households, where the retailer holds an edge over competitors. Those households making less than $50,000 annually accounted for 41% of Walmart’s average monthly active users (aMAU) versus 36% for hard discount, 30% for supermarkets, and 28% for Target.

Affluent Walmart online shoppers expanded to 8%, growing almost five times faster than the 4% year-over-year growth for its overall aMAU base. Supermarkets, hard discount, and Target all posted a decline in sales with this group.

“Walmart’s growth in households making $200,000+ per year shows that the ‘flight to value’ has even affected how this income group shops for groceries,” said David Bishop, partners at Brick Meets Click. “Affluent households that shop online for groceries at Walmart spend 1.5 times more each month than households in the lowest income bracket.”

In fact, lower-income households are spending less online at Target and at supermarkets as well, according to the report. In addition to a decline of 6% in Walmart sales involving those who make under $50,000 annually, supermarkets and Target suffered drops of 20% year over year.

Walmart was the only retailer to not suffer a decline in overall average order values (AOV), and the retailer’s AOV for online grocery orders placed by affluent shoppers surged more than 40% to $119 compared to a year ago, while the AOV for its lowest- income shoppers declined almost 6% to $84.

Overall online grocery order frequency rates at Walmart increased slightly during the first half of 2024—about a half of a percentage point, to 1.97 monthly orders versus 2023.

When shoppers were not buying food online at Walmart, they went to other supermarkets, which was the top spot for cross-shopping, according to the report.

About one-in-six monthly average Walmart shoppers also bought groceries online from a supermarket format within the same month during the first half of 2024, slipping 28 basis points year over year. The dip was driven by less cross-shopping among Walmart’s least and most affluent households, stated the report.