Online grocery sales in Sweden reached €320 million in 2014

Online sales of grocery in Sweden has totaled 3 billion Swedish kronor, or 320.3 million euros, in 2014. This means the industry has grown 41% compared with the previous year, when the industry was worth 224 million euros. Sales are expected to increase by 40% this year to 438 million euros.

These numbers come from a recent study, done by HUI Research for Svensk Digital Handel. It shows that more and more Swedes try to buy groceries online. Over the past year, one in four consumers shopped for groceries via the internet at least once. That’s quite a difference when you compare it with the online share in 2010, when that figure was 9 percent. According to HUI the main reasons to buy groceries online are ‘it saves time’, ‘ I can avoid carrying heavy bags’, ‘I don’t have to go to a physical store’ and ‘I can’t buy whenever I want’.

Disadvantages of shopping online
Respondents were also asked what they consider to be the biggest drawbacks of shopping online for groceries. The shipping costs, the fact that products are more expensive online than in the physical store, the desire to see the products before they buy them and the argument it’s fun to shop in stores, are the most popular answers to this question.

Popular groceries to shop online
In Sweden, full assorted grocery stores are more popular than both dinner kit solutions and specialty grocery stores. One in two persons who has shopped for groceries online, did this in a full-sized grocery store. Among the most popular products are heavy and bulky products (so consumers don’t need to carry these in bags from the offline supermarket), followed by fruit and vegetables and chocolate and dairy products.

Consumers are becoming more accustomed to shopping online with more players appearing on the market and an increased digitalization driving growth for groceries online. “New technologies drive growth in several industries, including the food industry. More and more groceries are sold online and we see a strong increase in purchases from mobile devices”, says Jonas Ogvall, CEO of Svensk Digital Handel. “Many purchases are made on the go, on the way to and from work.”

Still shopping from a desktop
Still, online grocery buyers preferred computers over any other device when it comes to making their purchases online. More than 80 percent said they used a desktop pc or a laptop while shopping fro groceries on the web. This preference was due to a larger screen size and the ability to see more than one product at a time.