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The future of online grocery in Europe

The online-grocery market is poised for growth. But only early movers will win—and only if they are adept, disciplined, and agile.

Nicolò Galante, Enrique García López, and Sarah Monroe

Just because Europeans aren’t buying groceries online en masse doesn’t mean they don’t want to. In fact, many of them love the idea of saving time by not having to trek to a supermarket, push a shopping cart down aisle after aisle, then wait in the checkout line. The convenience of shopping for groceries online is alluring. But convenience isn’t everything. Consumers will shop for groceries online only if the offer is right: they’re not willing to sacrifice the price, quality, and range of products that they’ve grown accustomed to in the supermarket, and they won’t put up with inconvenient delivery or pickup arrangements. To date, few European retailers

have given consumers a compelling reason to switch from the neighborhood grocer to the Web. That could soon change. Based on our latest research, we believe the advent of the “click and collect” model—which allows customers to place orders online and pick them up at a store or other designated location—could entice more retailers, as well as more consumers, to the online-grocery space. Nevertheless, getting into e-commerce isn’t a trivial matter for a grocery retailer. Will the payoff be worth the investment? Our research, which included a survey of more than 4,500 European

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consumers in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as a global scan of best practices in online grocery, strongly suggests that the answer is yes—for retailers that move quickly. Online grocery will play out differently in each country and
Toko Ohmori

Some of Europe’s grocery retailers have ventured into online selling, but in general their efforts have been tentative and half-hearted