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December 14 2007
Supermarkets gain over Christmas
Online sales for supermarkets are up year-on-year and electrical goods and drink are driving the increase through micro sites rather than through the main store pages.
The supermarkets have increased their share of the UK online retail market in the run up to Christmas. A Hitwise custom category of the top 45 supermarket operated websites accounted for 6.6% of all UK Internet visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites for the week ending 8 December 2007, up from 4.4% for the same week in 2005 and the figure is likely to increase this week as we hit the peak of the busiest week online for supermarkets.
One of the main drivers of supermarkets’ growth online has been the increasing proportion of non-food items sold. None of the top 10 product search terms sending traffic to the Supermarkets custom category for the 4 weeks ending 8 December were food related, however nine of the top 10 product searches were for electrical goods or entertainment products, with ‘Nintendo DS’ the most popular term. Other popular terms included ‘Music downloads’, ‘Laptops’ and ‘LCD TV’.
Although their online market share doesn’t yet match their dominance on the high street, there is no doubt that supermarkets are gaining ground on their online rivals," commented Robin Goad, Director of research at Hitwise. "As with the offline world, this growth is being fuelled by non-food sales. Often this is achieved by setting up specialist micro sites in order to gain market share in a particular niche market. For example, Tesco Direct (http://direct.tesco.com ) already has a 6% share of the Shopping and Classifieds – Department Stores category despite only having launched in September 2006, while Asda Electricals (http://www.asda-electricals.co.uk) increased its share of the Shopping and Classifieds – Appliances and Electronics category from 1.0% to 1.8% over the last year".
Another area of online retail that supermarkets have proved successful in is wine. Three of the top 10 wine retail websites for the week ending 8 December were operated by supermarkets, with Tesco Wine Warehouse (www.tesco.com/winestore ) alone accounting for a quarter of all visits to a Hitwise custom category of the top 50 wine retail websites. Combined, the online wine stores of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose account for one third of all visits to the category.
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