E-commerce Growing Fast!

Traditional grocery stores will lose another 1.6 percentage points of the dollar-spend market share

According to projections in The Future of Food Retailing by the Willard Bishop consultancy, by 2017, traditional grocery stores will lose another 1.6 percentage points of the dollar-spend market share. Alternatively, convenience stores will gain 1.1 percentage points of dollar-spend market share as they become even more ubiquitous with 161,342 retail locations. And, non-traditional grocery stores will grow by 0.5 percentage points of dollar-spend market share. But the most aggressive growth however, will be seen by e-commerce food and consumables sales at 12.1% annually between now and 2017. Bishop has the 2012 figure at $15.9 billion, up 16.9% from 2011, noting that “Amazon, Peapod and brick-and-mortar entrants into the e-commerce space continue to satisfy consumers’ needs for a quick, easy shopping experience…The assortment and quality of products, along with convenient delivery times, have been key to the growing success of this format. Changing consumers, Amazon’s recent expansion announcement, and new ‘click and collect’ pickup models will help ensure future success.” The reminder to retailers? Customers want convenience so it's important, from digital to mobile to apps…to have a presence on all platforms.