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Online grocery shopping still niche

Online shopping conceptWhile less than half (47.4 per cent) of the Australian population actually enjoy grocery shopping, the number of people opting for online alternatives remains relatively low, according to the latest findings by Roy Morgan Research.

Out of the 12.8 million people who are the sole grocery buyer for their household, just three per cent of them (389,000 people) do their grocery shop via the internet, in an average four weeks.

However, this is a substantial increase on 2011, when 169,000 grocery buyers were making their supermarket purchases this way.

Woolworth and Coles have the highest incidence of online transactions over other supermarket chains, as Aldi’s online offering is limited to alcohol, and IGA have yet to expand into e-commerce.

“Online grocery shopping is still relatively niche in Australia, but if supermarkets continue to invest in their e-commerce platforms, and introduce cheaper delivery and online loyalty schemes, it’s likely that the number of Aussie grocery-buyers shopping this way will continue to grow,” said Andrew Price, GM-Consumer Products, Roy Morgan Research.

“In today’s time-pressed society, getting to the supermarket is not always easy; whereas a few clicks on a smartphone can be done anywhere, any time.”

The findings also reveal that the proportion of shoppers  buying alcohol online is growing, having almost doubled from 1.6 per cent (or 196,000 people) in 2011, to 3.1 per cent (398,000) as of June 2015.

online-grocery-graph
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), July 2014 – June 2015 (n=12,798).

 

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