Rising food prices push Brits online to shop for groceries

Seventy-four percent of consumers in the UK use the Internet to conduct their grocery shopping, found Nielsen in their Global Survey of Digital Influence on Global Shopping. The survey involved more than 28,000 online consumers across 56 countries.

The main reason Brits head online is to save money, found the research, with almost half (48%) looking for deals, 30% seeking coupons from dedicated sites and a quarter using the Internet to look for grocery price comparisons. The UK leads European countries in using the Internet to save money on their food shopping with 43% of Europeans overall looking for money-saving channels online.

"While much has been made about fitness and wellbeing in this, an Olympic year, British shoppers are as likely to make purchase decisions based on retailer loyalty programmes and the use of coupons and vouchers - available online or via their smartphones - as they are on what's best for their health," says Mike Watkins, Nielsen UK's head of retailer insight.

In fact, such is the popularity of buying foodstuffs online that it is now the third most popular category in the UK behind travel (30%) and books, magazines and newspapers (28%) with 27% planning to purchase food and drink online in the coming months.

The purchasing of groceries online has come a long way in the last couple of years. Previously, consumers' reticence to allow a stranger to pick the ripeness of their fruit, the shape of their fish fillets, the fattiness of a steak or a substitute item has been a turn off.

Tags: coupons, Europe, food industry, grocery shopping, online shopping, shopping trends, supermarket