LONDON (UK) – Market researcher NielsenIQ has announced that with a 1% increase in just a month, COVID-19 lockdowns drove the online share of British grocery sales to a record 17% in February. It further added that British shoppers spent 1.5 billion pounds ($2.1 billion) on online groceries in the four weeks to Feb. 27, a jump of 132% year-on-year.
It further added that the number of British households shopping for groceries online has more than doubled over the last year to 11.8 million or 41%.
Mike Watkins, NielsenIQ’s UK head of retailer and business insight, said, “Online grocery has now become a permanent fixture for many UK shoppers – it is now past the ‘tipping point’ and is at the ‘sticking point’,” said.
“As vaccination programmes prove successful and with the government outlining a clear roadmap out of lockdown, it’s clear that this has been a boost to consumer confidence and signals another change in purchasing habits,” Watkins added.
NielsenIQ said that over the 12 weeks to Feb. 27, Morrisons was the best performer of the country’s four major supermarket groups with an 11.7% sales increase. Sales at market leader Tesco rose 9.5%. They were up 8.7% at Sainsbury’s and up 6.8% at Asda.