Grocery Shopping for the 21st Century: Man Versus Machine

The global online grocery shopping market is growing, but consumers still prefer the experience of shopping in-person, a recent Nielsen report concluded.
Grocery Shopping for the 21st Century: Man Versus Machine
The walls of Sydney's Town Hall railway station are bedecked to resemble a Woolworths' supermarket shelf in Australia's first virtual supermarket, on February 19, 2012. Photo by Marianna Massey/Getty Images for Woolworths
Annie Wu
Updated:

Digital technology is about to take over a new territory: grocery shopping. Or rather, a new global survey shows the extent to which the domination’s already happening.

A recent Nielsen survey found that a full quarter of respondents it surveyed across the world, said they order groceries online. Another 55 percent said they are willing to try online grocery shopping in the future. These are huge numbers.

Today, ordering online to get products delivered to your home is just one of many e-commerce options. There’s also ordering products for in-store pick-up or pick-up at some other location, buying from virtual supermarkets, and signing up for subscription services that automatically replenish your order at specified time periods.

For their survey, Nielsen asked 30,000 participants from 60 countries about their online shopping habits.

Annie Wu
Annie Wu
Author
Annie Wu joined the full-time staff at the Epoch Times in July 2014. That year, she won a first-place award from the New York Press Association for best spot news coverage. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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