Hunt for necessities drives spike in online shopping

Online shopping has surged 25% across the country as residents throughout California and other states are forced to stay home to check the spread of the coronavirus, according to an analysis by Adobe Analytics.

The analysis published Tuesday compared growth in online shopping from March 1-11 to March 13-15 and covered thousands of retailers, including 80 of the top 100 U.S. web sellers. It was based on trillions of visits to retail sites and from hundreds of millions of product codes.

The spike in online shopping was driven by a 100% jump in online grocery sales, the analysis said, as panic buying in March amid the worsening pandemic and public lockdowns cleared supermarket shelves of durable staples like canned foods, pasta and flour.

E-tailers also saw huge spikes in demand for particular items where brickand-mortar retail shortages have made national headlines — online sales for hand sanitizers, masks, gloves and anti-bacterial sprays skyrocketed 807%, the analysis said.

Online toilet paper sales shot up 231%, and sales of cold medicines and pain relievers were up 217%, it said. Online orders for non-perishable canned and shelfstable goods increased 87%.

But it wasn’t just foods and sanitary items that flew out of e-tailers’ warehouses. Orders for fitness equipment like kettlebells, dumbbells and treadmills jumped 55%.

“I think one interesting trend we’re seeing in the data is that consumers are now moving from panic buying to more adaptation buying,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “While we saw products like hand sanitizers and toilet paper peak as early as late January, we are now seeing significant growth in a category like fitness equipment.”

But as is evident with items like sanitizing wipes and toilet paper, online retailers aren’t having much better luck keeping them in stock than the grocery stores and pharmacies. If you can find them, they won’t even ship for weeks.

Many of the states with the most serious impacts from the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic have seen the biggest jumps in online sales. New York, California, Washington, Ohio and Oregon saw online sales grow 20% or more, Adobe Analytics said.

“Another call out is that the surge online means that we need to get a better grasp of the digital economy,” Pandya said. “As our world grapples with a digital-only reality, the ability to track spending trends and prices in real-time is becoming more critical for not only consumers, but companies and policymakers as well.”