U.S. grocery consumers have flocked online at a rate never seen previously because of the COVID pandemic, with time savings being the primary motivating factor rather than COVID-related safety concerns.

Chicago-based IRI and Label Insight announced an expansion of their relationship. The companies’ enhanced partnership provides CPG marketers with stronger tools to design marketing campaigns that drive brand growth based on consumer demand for more than 500 product-level attributes, such as “gluten free” and “sustainably sourced.”

Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. (IRI) announced the launch of the IRI CPG Inflation Tracker on its free, online COVID-19 Data Dashboard. The new tool provides a standard metric for tracking weekly price-per-unit changes for consumer packaged goods compared with the year-ago period across departments, including fixed and random weight products, grocery aisles and retail formats.

For the United States, sales trends remain slightly elevated as total store sales are up 4.1 percent, according to IRI data. Total non-edible sale are relatively flat (up 0.8 percent), while total edible sales are up 5.1 percent.

New results released today by the Consumer Brands Association, Arlington, Va., show that in the survey’s eighth week, Americans have settled into pandemic life, feeling less concerned about the coronavirus but believing that the government will move to reopen the country sooner than it should.