Sales hit £10 million per week for Tesco online
that for the first time ever booming online grocery sales have
reached more than £10 million (€15.6m) in a week - an encouraging
portent for yuletide spending.
Trail blazers in e-commerce UK retailer Tesco announced this week that booming online grocery sales have reached more than £10 million (€15.6m) in a week for the first time ever.
While competitors have struggled with business-to-consumer internet trading, Tesco has continually shown strong growth in this area, proving that B2C can be profitable. According to the company, well over 100,000 households across the UK took delivery during the last week in November of shopping that they had ordered from the supermarket using the Internet.
The breakthrough, claims Tesco, is being taken as confirmation that Britain has now accepted online supermarket shopping as a normal part of day-to-day life. Tesco.com chief executive John Browett said: "These figures show that supermarket shopping online has finally turned the corner.
"Over a million households all over the country have now taken delivery of groceries from Tesco.com. A proportion of last week's sales are from customers taking our advice to stock up early for Christmas - but it's mostly down to people doing their regular weekly shop with Tesco.com, rather than instore."
Tesco.com boasted this week that it is the only UK supermarket to offer a nationwide online service, covering 95 per cent of the population, with its fleet of 950 delivery vans making nearly 24,000 grocery deliveries a day, including more than a million bottles of wine and champagne, 20,000 Christmas puds and 3 million nappies.
John Browett added: "Shoppers use the Internet for convenience. They've too many other things to do with their lives than spend half their time in shopping centres. However, until recently, many people still found the idea of using the computer to do their regular supermarket shop just too big a change.
"But the mystery has gone away now. We all know at least somebody who supermarket-shops on the Net - be they a busy working mum or a retired couple - and that makes taking the plunge so much easier."
The Tesco results confirm the very real situation where consumers in the UK, generally party to a flexible eating and shopping culture 'style a l'amerique' , are more willing to bend the traditional eating rules. They do not feel the same urge as perhaps the Italians, French and the Spanish to visit the local market, butcher and baker to see at first hand the products set for the dinner table.
