For the last two months a significant percentage of the world’s population has been forced to stay at homes due to lockdowns and other movement restrictions imposed by their respective governments to decrease the rate of spread of deadly coronavirus disease.
Industry data provided by a market research firm Nielsen Holdings shows that in a four week period between April and March, Britain residents spend record 1.2 billion pounds ($1.5 billion) on online grocery shopping.
This staggering figure is simply attributed to the fact that the whole of Britain was under lockdown in entire month of April leaving residents with no other options.
Nielsen Holdings says in the four week period ending May 16 online groceries increased by 13% up from a 7% increase which the country saw at a similar period last year.
According to the data, 7.9 million online grocery orders were placed by British households with 1.1 million of them being from new online shoppers. This number is way up than the 4.8 million recorded last year in the same period.
The spike pushed year-on-year growth rate of online grocery sales to a new record high of 103%.
Unfortunately, physical visits to the grocery shops declined by 24% nonetheless sales growth increased by 6%.
“Following over eight weeks in lockdown, UK shoppers are more accustomed to restricted living, and have adapted their grocery shopping habits to match,” said Mike Watkins, head of Nielsen in the UK.
The amount which shoppers spend on a single visit to the grocery went up by 45% with an average basket costing 21.6 pounds. The research firm attributes the difference to a change in consumer behavior caused by coronavirus pandemic.
