Amazon, with its online food delivery service Fresh, and other online vendors of fast moving consumer goods (the type you normally buy in supermarkets and drug stores) still have an awful long way to go if they are to make a meaningful dent in the market share still held by traditional bricks and mortar grocery stores.
As a share of all FMCG revenue in the UK, e-commerce still accounted for only 7.6 percent as of H1 2019 (even though it might be higher during the ongoing coronavirus crisis), according to analyst Kantar. This compares to the likes of South Korea, with a huge 20.3 percent of groceries bought online. Having seen a 40 percent increase in online grocery spending in 2016, the country is the world leader, and by some margin. In second place, with 15.2 percentage points, is China, which more than doubled the share of online grocery shopping between 2016 and 2018. FMCG e-commerce has long been on offer to consumers in the UK and is very much a mature market, with penetration growth slowing over the last few years. Markets in the developing world, like India and Brazil, have yet to experience any meaningful impact of online grocery shopping.
