Grocery sales see gains in some expected and unexpected categories

Grocery shopping and buying behavior nationwide has continued to change significantly because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to research conducted by Catalina, a St. Petersburg marketing firm that specializes in shopper intelligence.

Shoppers are spending more but making fewer trips to the grocery store, the company found in a comprehensive analysis of purchase history over the past three years. It also found, by studying the more than two billion Universal Product Codes = scanned daily in U.S. stores, that cleaning supplies, turkey/chicken bacon and yeast were the items that have seen the biggest sales spikes during the pandemic. 

“Our data scientists and advanced analytics teams have been mining Catalina’s unparalleled Buyer Intelligence Database … to track how buying behavior and decisions have continued to shift since concerns over COVID-19 took hold earlier this year,” Catalina Chief Marketing Officer Marta Cyhan states in a press release. “These real-time insights have helped our retail and brand customers adjust their marketing, media and activation strategies, while also helping to inform their stocking and supply chain decisions.”