1 in 6 Dutch will order groceries online in 2017

Almost 1.6 million Dutch people already shopped for groceries online at least once and expectations are the 2 million milestone will be reached next year. This means that one in six Dutch will buy their groceries online in 2017. The total revenue of online supermarkets in the Netherlands is expected to increase by 30 percent.

Consumers in the Netherlands still buy the lion’s share of their groceries in physical supermarkets and this isn’t about to change soon. But the biggest revenue growth will be generated in the online sales channel. Expectations are online supermarkets will grow 30 percent in terms of revenue by 2017. This means the market share of online supermarkets within the supermarket industry will reach 5 percent. This is evident from the Smart Food Monitor, a market research from Multiscope among 7,000 Dutch consumers.

Most of online grocery shoppers (68 percent) have their groceries delivered to their homes. One in five prefer picking them up at the physical store, while about ten percent pick up their groceries at a pickup point.

Albert Heijn most popular online supermarket in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn’s online store Ah.nl is the most popular online supermarket. About sixty percent of online grocery shoppers us this website to order their foods and drinks. Other popular online supermarkets are Jumbo (18%), Plus (5%), pure player Picnic (4%) and Hoogvliet (4%). Online grocery shoppers in the Netherlands especially order durable goods and dranks, such as soda, beer and wine.

According to the research, two in three consumers think it’s unnecessary to order groceries online when there’s a physical supermarket nearby. Aside from that, especially women (38%) think it’s inconvenient they can’t pick the products themselves.

Lower delivery fee would lead to more online shoppers

If online supermarkets wouldn’t charge any delivery costs, of if they would lower the costs, a quarter of consumers would shop online for groceries. Among the group of consumers who have never bought their groceries online, the group of 18 to 34 year olds are most likely to do this in the future.