Sainsbury's more than doubled its e-commerce sales last year, according to data from Edge By Ascential, reporting a 120% rise in online sales.
Data from Edge By Ascential's Edge Retail Database showed that Iceland saw the second highest e-commerce sales growth of the UK's major grocers last year, registering a 92% increase, while Waitrose saw 57% e-commerce sales growth.
Elsewhere, Morrisons reported 55% e-commerce sales growth in 2020, followed by Tesco, which saw e-commerce sales rise by 49%, and online only grocer Ocado, which saw e-commerce sales rise by 35%.
Asda saw the weakest e-commerce sales growth of all the 'Big Four' retailers, seeing its online market grow by 13%. In fact, Asda was outpaced by Aldi in terms of e-commerce sales growth, with the discounter registering an e-commerce sales increase of 18%.
Lidl, which did not dip its toe into the online market last year, registered no e-commerce sales growth as a result.
Commenting back in April, at the time of Sainsbury's full-year results announcement, the retailer's chief executive Simon Roberts said, “We have accelerated our digital transformation this year as we focus on serving customers however they want to shop with us. We have more than doubled our online grocery sales and have done this while improving profitability."
2020 E-Commerce Sales Growth By UK Retailer*
- Sainsbury's 120%
- Iceland 92%
- Waitrose 57%
- Morrisons 55%
- Tesco 49%
- Asda 13%
- Ocado 35%
- Aldi 18%
- Lidl N/A
*Data by Edge By Ascential
Most of the major grocers are continuing to ramp up their online capabilities, even as the pandemic subsides – Asda has just announced an extension of its Express Delivery service, while Tesco has said that it plans to extend its Whoosh online delivery platform. Elsewhere, Sainsbury's recently rolled out a digital loyalty scheme.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. For more Retail news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
