US Consumers Quickly Adapting to Change

23rd November 2020

Henry Horkan, Manager North America, Bord Bia - The Irish Food Board

 While the impact of Covid-19 on grocery shopping habits around the globe has been clear for some time, how this has played out in the US has been little short of transformational. Relatively conventional behaviors in other markets such as online shopping, cooking from scratch and an ever expanding move towards convenience were considered at most tangential to how US consumers shopped their groceries, these along with other considerations have now established themselves as part of a fundamental shift in the retail landscape. This is all the more significant given the size of the overall market for online and omnichannel across the US, growing by 15% in 2019 to $601.75 billion to put that into perspective, online grocery sales are forecast to grow by 40% in 2020 and some estimates suggest, could account for 21.5% of total US grocery sales by 2025.

In addition to this significant propelling of US consumers towards online shopping, in Bord Bia’s recent webinar with leading US distributor KeHE, Director of Brand Development Rachelle Radcliffe outlined many of these other emergent trends and how the US consumer is not only adapting to this ‘New Normal’ but actively embracing it.

These trends, many of which are mirrored in Bord Bia’s Indicator Report series, signify that whatever the uncertainly of the months ahead, shopper behavior will continue to be multifaceted and responsive to changing environmental dynamics.