Online grocery shopping set to surge

A new Nielsen report predicts that online grocery sales will reach $25 billion in the United States by the year 2014.

That’s up from $12 billion in 2010.

On its blog, Nielsen cited several reasons for the anticipated growth. One is that younger people just now starting to get married and have children are comfortable doing everything through the Web. “To these tech-savvy media mavens, online is a way of life for convenient, on-demand and personalized attention,” Nielsen stated.

Another reason is online selling is become more cost effective for retailers and suppliers.

"Online grocery shopping is no longer coming–it has arrived," the research firm stated on its blog.

Nielsen also provided several points retailers should be aware of in regards to online grocery shopping. Among them:

• Consumers enjoy online grocery shopping but take time to adjust. Therefore, retailers must make it as easy as possible to through navigation, search and tools like shopping lists.

• Online baskets are usually higher than offline baskets in food and beverages ($80 online versus $30 offline).

• Big brands are powerful attractors to consumers on store shelves, but less so on the Internet. In fact, online often favours niche products.

Online grocery retailers in the U.S. include Wal-Mart, Amazon, FreshDirect.com.