A senior market analyst at www.finspreads.com has said that the UK grocery market looks set to play host to an increasing online battle in the coming years, following the news that Aldi and Amazon are introducing online offerings there.
"One immediately thinks of UK grocery retailers for whom the Internet is at least a moderately material source of sales right now - namely Ocado, but also all of the ‘Big 4’ and even Waitrose, which is involved in a dual-purpose relationship with Ocado at the moment," the analyst said.
"We could expect stepped up bearish sentiment at least on Ocado stock, most particularly, especially given that Aldi’s potential UK launch may come in relatively quick succession after a comprehensive UK roll-out of ‘Amazon Fresh’ in 2015 (though that has not been confirmed)."
The analysts added that both Aldi and Amazon will "face the same logistical issues in selling groceries online, and it’s worth noting that in Aldi’s case, it has in fact decided to sidestep operational problems, at least initially, by not retailing food at all."
The online portion of grocery retail is still just approximately 5% of the UK total, the analyst added, which "gives the wider grocery industry some time, though they do not of course insure Tesco et al entirely to the additional overall threat posed by discounters online."
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
