In this day and age of e-commerce and online shopping, one would expect to find just about anything they want for sale on the Internet. But despite the growing number of e-commerce platforms, Europe remains behind the curve by quite a margin. In fact, based on value share for purchasing goods online, South Korea has the world’s largest market.
Europe Is On The Fence About E-commerce
New research by Kantar Worldpanel goes to show the e-commerce industry is not all black-and-white. When it comes to the percent of grocery sales occurring online, Europe falls into a gray area. On one hand, select countries such as the UK and France show a healthy growth of online grocery shopping, on the other hand, the rest see a rate of under 1% for online grocery sales.
To put this into perspective, 6.9% of all UK grocery sales occur through e-commerce, which is quite a high number. Romania, on the other hand, is well behind the curve with 0.2% of grocery sales occurring online. This shows a large gap between different countries on the same continent, which leaves room for entrepreneurs to find solutions to close it.
At the same time, several countries also offer more ways to buy groceries online compared to others. In the UK and France, there are several ways to do so. In Romania, Italy, and Austria, options are very limited. It seems that for some reason, in those countries there does not seem to be an overly large demand to purchase groceries online.
Retailers have to keep in mind the e-commerce industry will only continue to grow. Kantar estimates the online consumer goods market will turn into a 135 million euro business in the coming years. The UK will be leading this charge, followed by France, Germany, and The Netherlands. Other regions will have to step up their efforts or risk being left behind.
Contrary to what some people may think, plenty of consumers still rely on brick-and-mortar locations for grocery shopping. Even though some chains offer so-called “collect-and-go” services, where users can put together their shopping cart online and pick it up, that has not become a big trend yet.
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