Mass Retailers, Including Walmart, Tie Grocers on Penetration For the First Time: What’s Next?

According to the latest Wave 12 report of the dunnhumby Consumer Trends Tracker (CTT), mass-channel retailers have — for the first time — tied traditional grocers in terms of penetration, both reaching 79%.

The quarterly CTT debuted in April 2022, and since that time, mass retailer penetration has ticked upward by 5%, “representing a shift of millions of consumers changing shopping patterns,” per a press release.

“We are seeing that U.S. households are realigning where they shop based on affordability,” said Matt O’Grady, dunnhumby’s president of the Americas.

“What makes this different from the 2023 inflation spike is that consumer concern persists even as actual inflation moderates. The consumer is just not feeling it. Where they shop, how they use coupons, even how they adopt AI—everything aligns to saving money. When financial insecurity becomes this entrenched, grocery affordability becomes paramount, and shopping behavior doesn’t just snap back,” O’Grady added.

Other notable findings pulled from the data include:

• Walmart showed soaring strength, reaching a penetration rate of 72%: This represents an increase of 6% since December 2024, and with the next strongest entries being Dollar General (29%), Aldi (28%), Target (26%), Dollar Tree (25%), Costco (25%), Kroger (24%), and Amazon (20%), representative of the blue-and-yellow brand’s U.S. dominance on this metric. Four of these retailers saw penetration growth, with DG up 6%, Dollar Tree up 4%, and Kroger also up 4%, while the remainder stayed flat.
• The most important needs are split between physical and digital: Shoppers polled put forth a mixed bag of physical and digital asks from retailers, with “items always being in stock” and a clean and well-kept store bringing in 78% and 77% in terms of importance scores, respectively. Needs tied to it being “easy to shop on the website or app,” and the website or app itself being stable and reliable, both followed at 76% importance scores. Finally, the brick-and-mortar store being in a location convenient for each consumer brought up the rear of the top five, also notching a 76% importance score.
• Food insecurity abounds, and U.S. shoppers are exceedingly worried about food inflation: On the first, almost 40% of Americans between the ages of 45-54 were considered to be affected by food insecurity, as well as one-in-three families with children. The data also suggests that working-age adults deal with food insecurity at a rate four times higher than seniors aged 65-plus. On the second note, U.S. shoppers perceive the rate of food inflation to be at nearly 20% (19.6%), nearly nine-times the actual rate of 2.4% registered in December 2025.

Loyalty Cements Itself, Sustainability Shows a Needs vs. Outcomes Gulf, and AI Uptake Divides

Loyalty saw growing surges of strength with nearly half (47%) of shoppers redeeming coupons through in-house loyalty programs, an increase of 2.5% versus last quarters figures. Meanwhile, an increase in stated needs regarding sustainability didn’t translate to actual consumer spend, with all related behaviors (e.g. “read sustainability information on pack,” and “select sustainable products or packaging” both tumbling.

Two competing narratives closed out the dunnhumby data on the AI question. While 15% of U.S. shoppers indicated they’d used tools like ChatGPT to assist in their grocery shopping — and nearly double that number (28%) said they were likely to do so in the next year — the vast majority of consumers stated they either don’t see the need, or would prefer not, to use AI in this fashion.