Baby boomers, to retailers’ surprise, are dominating online shopping

“My youngest daughter shops online constantly, so I called her up and said, ‘Hey, this online shopping thing — how does it work?’” said Clay, 60, a retired engineer in Nashville. “She gave me a quick rundown, and it just blew me out of the water.”

The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped habits and behaviors of even the most resolute shoppers as social distancing became a key line of defense against infection. But one of the most significant and unexpected shifts, experts say, was the almost immediate embrace of online shopping by people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.

As baby boomers move online, retailers and consumer goods brands are scrambling to meet them there with round-the-clock customer service, detailed nutrition information and interactive videos aimed at simplifying e-commerce for the uninitiated. Instacart, the nation’s largest online grocery provider, has created a service that helps older consumers set up accounts, fill their carts and place their first orders. The program has been popular, helping onboard hundreds of thousands of new shoppers.

“There has been a significant increase in consumers over 50 who had never shopped online and are now saying, ‘Oh wow, this is so much easier than I thought,’” said Deborah Weinswig, chief executive of retail consulting firm Coresight Research. “There’s going to be a lot more mixing and matching: ‘Maybe I want to go to the store to squeeze my own vegetables, but I’ll get non-perishables and dry goods delivered.’”

Consumers 65 and older, on average, spent a total of $1,615 online from January through October, a 49 percent increase from a year earlier, making them the fastest-growing cohort of online shoppers, according to NPD Group’s Checkout Tracking, which captures data from consumer receipts both online and in stores. Frequency of purchases, meanwhile, climbed more than 40 percent.

And though the trend is born primarily from necessity — older adults are at higher risk for complications if they contract covid-19 — analysts say they expect the behavior to stick even after the pandemic is over.

“I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a grocery store,” said Chip Bergh, 63, chief executive of Levi Strauss & Co. “I’m one of those people who likes to go grocery shopping, but I haven’t stepped foot in one during the pandemic. It works well enough.”

Clay starts each month with a $1,200 grocery delivery for his four-person household in Nashville, including his 23-year-old son and 80-year-old mother. Sometimes he makes a Kroger run to pick up meat, bananas and other fresh items, but otherwise he avoids stores.

“I’m 60 and I have a heart condition, so I’m in that high-risk category,” he said. “I was advised by my doctor: ‘Don’t go out unless you have to.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve just learned this online shopping stuff.’”

It hadn’t occurred to Ethel Murrell that she could fill her fridge without a trip to the store until a few months ago, after some promotional Instacart emails and her own wariness about going out during the pandemic prompted the 75-year-old to give grocery delivery a try.

“Now I love it so much that I won’t ever go back,” said Murrell, who lives in Prince George’s County, Md., and uses a combination of delivery and curbside pickup services. She also got an Amazon Prime membership last year, which she says she wouldn’t have ordinarily considered. (Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, owns The Washington Post.)

“I’ll be honest with you: I was just so used to going to the store,” she said. “But now, I’m thinking, why did I ever do that?”

Grocery delivery was supposed to be the ultimate pandemic lifeline. But it’s falling short.

Baby boomers are a coveted demographic:..

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