The coronavirus pandemic has massively reshaped consumer behavior. Not only have consumers started spending more time on social media, but they are also doing more online shopping. Grocery shopping is no exception to this.

Before COVID-19, the ecommerce share of US grocery sales for 2020 was forecast at 4.3 percent. But as brick-and-mortar stores shut and consumers began purchasing groceries online, the forecast was revised to 10.2 percent—more than double the original.

So where do US consumers consider to be the best places to order groceries online in the US?

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Best Places To Order Groceries Online in the US: Ranked by Consumers

Recent survey results show that in 2020, the best online grocery stores in the US, as ranked by consumers, were topped by Walmart and Amazon. Incidentally, it’s also the two biggest ecommerce companies in the country in terms of market capitalization. 

Just over half (50.5 percent) of US consumers say they had bought groceries from Walmart online, where just under half (49 percent) purchased from Amazon.

These two stores are clearly consumers’ favorite online grocery stores, as the third best place to buy groceries online, Instacart, was visited by way fewer people. One out of five (20.3 percent) of US consumers bought from the San Francisco-based company. 

Despite its big gap from Walmart and Amazon, Instacart has actually seen exponential growth in 2020. Analysts say it has become the “leading US online grocery aggregator.” In fact, the number of shoppers purchasing from Instacart has skyrocketed from 70,000 in 2019 to over half a million in 2020. 

The number of times the Instacart app has been downloaded is also around 30 percent higher than pre-COVID-19 times.

Following Instacart is hypermart Target, which 18.3 percent of consumers bought groceries from online. Kroger, a grocery chain that is particularly popular in Midwestern and Southern US, rounds out the five best online grocery stores in the US at 12 percent.

The list of ten best places to order groceries online in the US also includes Costco (eight percent), Fresh Direct (3.2 percent), and Peapod (2.9 percent).

Additionally, 9.2 percent of US consumers say they’ve purchased from other grocer’s websites, while 4.4 percent say they’ve purchased from other online grocery sites.

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