Shopping online for groceries popular in Sweden

The online sales of food products in Sweden continues to grow strong. Last year sales increased by 38 percent compared to the previous year. Now more than one in five Swedes has bought groceries online in the past year.

The Svensk Digital Handel released its Digital Mathandel 2014 report and it shows that last year the online food industry in Sweden was worth 2.2 billion kronor (243 million euros). This represents a growth of 38% compared to the previous year. The main reasons for buying food online are “it’s convenient”, “there’s a wide product range available” and “it saves me time”. Of those who tried to shop for groceries online, three-quarters said they will buy food online again in the coming year. And seventy percent also said they would recommend buying food digitally to others.

Food online can be divided into three different categories, the Swedish trade organization writes: the full-sized grocery store, dinner solutions and stores that specialize in a particular product range. In previous years the dinner solutions have been the most popular among Swedish consumers, but last year it got outpaced by the digital grocery stores. Of those who have purchased groceries online, 43 percent said they have bought something in a full-sized online grocery store, while 36 percent said they bought dinner solutions online. According to Jonas Oqvall, CEO of Svensk Digital Handel, the growing popularity of full-size online grocery stores may be because of consumers become more accustomed to buy food online, so they increasingly but other food products too.

Further growth of the online food industry is something Jonas Oqvall, CEO of Svensk Digital Handel, expects to happen. “When the younger and more online shopping generation starts working and having a family, the online food trade will likely increase even more. But the industry faces a number of challenges, including logistics, presentation of goods and the customers’ willingness to feel the products before purchase. We need to work on this to see good results.”