Online Grocery Marketing Scorecard Report

Three-quarters of Americans’ calories come from food purchased at retailers, making grocery stores and the retail food environment key contributors to the diets and health of Americans. As the food environment evolves, it is becoming more digitized. The COVID-19 pandemic more than doubled sales in online grocery shopping in the U.S., and online grocery sales is projected to account for over ~21% of total grocery sales in the U.S. by 2025. The expansion of online grocery shopping presents new opportunities and challenges for improving food access and prioritizing healthy food marketing. Despite the growing use of online grocery platforms, there is limited research examining online food marketing practices. To address this gap, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) conducted online shopping simulations in 2023 to assess the online food retail environments at 11 top revenue-generating online food retailers in the U.S. Our study scored and ranked these retailers based on the healthfulness of food marketing online with respect to the following four dimensions: • Pricing: healthfulness of products marketed with price marketing strategies (e.g., discounts, rewards, and time-limited deals) • Placement: healthfulness of products marketed with placement strategies (e.g., sponsored product recommendations, cross-promotions, search result ordering) • Promotion: healthfulness of products marketed with promotion strategies other than pricing (e.g., title cards, banner advertisements, branded site content, user feedback, links to social media pages, retailer-generated shopping lists) • Usability: prevalence of website tools or features that support an informed and equitable shopping experience for all customers (e.g., nutrition-related filters, online SNAP acceptance, and compliance with web accessibility guidelines) This report is the first of its kind to identify and rank individual online retailer performance—thus providing information retailers can use to increase healthy food marketing, decrease unhealthy food marketing, and make healthy food choices online accessible for all consumers.

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