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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

« The demographics of gadgets | Long tail evolution »

Supermarkets' online share increasing

December 13, 2007

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. Furthermore, this figure is likely to increase for the week ending 15 December, traditionally the busiest week online for supermarkets.

One of the main drivers of supermarkets’ growth online has been the increasing proportion of non-food items they are selling. As the table below illustrates, 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. Nine of the top 10 product searches were for electricals 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. 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 already has a 6% share of the Shopping and Classifieds – Department Stores category despite only having launched in September 2006, while Asda Electricals 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. As the table below illustrates, three of the top 10 wine retail websites for the week ending 8 December were operated by supermarkets, with Tesco Wine Warehouse 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, while ‘waitrose wine’ was the second most popular search term containing the word ‘waitrose’ during the 4 weeks ending 8 December.

Posted by Robin Goad at 04:10 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Food | Gadgets | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds

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