Huge growth in online food industry expected in Sweden

One in five consumers in Sweden already brought groceries online last year, but the online food industry in this European country is expected to grow even more significant in 2016. According to a report by the Swedish Trade Federation, it’s expected to grow by 1.6 billion kronor, 169 million euros, during this year.

Buying food online is something many customers needed to become familiar with. Traditionally, fruits and vegetables are things customers wants to feel in their hands before buying them. But during the last couple of years, food online has become an interesting industry that shows lots of potential. The Swedish Trade Federation announced that online grocery sales in the Scandinavian country increased by 40 percent last year (compared to 2014), and during the first quarter this year, sales increased by 32 percent.

Online couponing platform CupoNation analyzed the interest among Swedish consumers, so it could get an overview of how this industry is growing and how ecommerce players in the future can compete against already established companies such as ICA and Coop.

Supermarkets in Sweden start with selling food online

In Sweden, more and more bags of food are being delivered to the consumers’ homes, which has led to an increase in popularity of online stores such as Linas Matkasse and Mathem. “The popularity is recognized, since the big player ICA launched its ecommerce service not long ago and now Willys and Hemköp, both major supermarkets, are establishing a clear online presence”, CupoNation writes.

The couponing website studied search volumes for ecommerce players Linas Matkasse and Mathem, and the traffic to online grocery stores on its own online platform. These are the search volumes for Linas Matkasse and Mathem for the periods January-June 2015 and January-June 2016:

Growing interest in food online in Sweden

“The volumes above illustrate the growing interest in food online among Swedish consumers this year compared to last year”, the website explains. “There is a significant increase almost every month during this period in comparison with the same period in 2015.” For Mathem, the search volumes grew by about 76.5 percent during the period January-June 2016 and for Linas Matkasse there was an increase of 15 percent during the same period.

“It has been interesting to follow the development of online grocery sales. As more and more companies have started operations online the grocery market has followed. Even the biggest companies are now operating online”, says Mads Bukholt, managing director Nordics at CupoNation. “Some lose money, while others see profit – but everyone wants and tries to grab the market share before their competitor, because they are aware of the fact that this market can be the key to compete in this business in the future.”

Strong growth in traffic among online grocery stores

CupoNation also analyzed the traffic among its users to the pages where the company offers discount codes for online grocery stores. In the following graph, the company has looked into the period January-July for both 2015 and 2016:

The graphs show the increasing importance of online grocery stores, CupoNation says. There is also a greater user engagement for food online, as there has been an increase of 235 percent to these pages this year, compared to the same period last year.