May 24, 2022

By: Steve Markenson, Director, Research & Insights, FMI

The food retail industry continues to battle an obstacle course of issues, including the pandemic/endemic; supply chain challenges; inflation; domestic tragedies; and the ramifications of a war in Ukraine. With all this turmoil, it is comforting to see some familiar and reassuring themes revealed in the second part of our U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends series, Shopping Trends 2022.

Highlights from the analysis include:

Shoppers still enjoy grocery shopping.

The pandemic has not diminished the appeal of grocery shopping, particularly for younger shoppers. Satisfaction with their primary store remains high for shoppers.

The primary store remains relevant.

Mass, Club and Online-centric channels have held their pandemic gains, but shoppers retain supermarkets in their mix. In fact, the breadth of channels (average 4.0) and banners (average 4.9) shopped remains stable.

Trust in food safety at grocery stores remains strong.

In addition to trusting their grocery stores to ensure food safety (90% do), many shoppers continue to say their grocery store is working with them to stay healthy. Interestingly shoppers say they themselves are responsible for ensuring what they buy at the grocery store is nutritious.

Shoppers continue to evolve their grocery shopping methods.

As outlined in our first part of our U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends series, shopping habits have evolved over the past few years, with many migrating to online grocery shopping options. In fact, one of the participants in our ethnographic research illuminated this progression in the video below.

We continue to explore shoppers’ have amazing resilience, perseverance and creativity in how they shop since the onset of the pandemic. Stay tuned as FMI continues to plot the evolving behaviors among shoppers with FMI’s six--part U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends series.