Online Confectionery Shopping Potential Yet To Be Tapped

More than nine in ten adults in the UK purchase confectionery, but just 12% of the country’s online grocery shoppers visit confectionery-related pages. In fact, only 6% of online shoppers make a purchase of confectionery via the web, which points to opportunities for confectionery producers that could help them foster their online presence and sales as a result.

These are insights from Kantar Media’s Compete Online Shopper Intelligence report, which suggests that, as a whole, confectionery is more difficult to find on the web, and quite easy to forget to look for if it’s not included in shopping lists. This implies that online confectionery shopping is an area yet to be tapped, though it has the potential to help brands “make a greater appearance in online grocery baskets,” Sandy Livingstone, Kantar Media Compete’s client services director and author of the study, commented.

The media monitoring and marketing researcher looked at the number of confectionery shoppers visiting the country’s three major supermarket websites: Tesco.com, Asda.com and Sainsburys.co.uk. The retailer attracting the highest number of confectionery shoppers was Tesco, which sees 59% of its users visiting confectionery pages. Next was Asda with 42%, while Sainsbury’s came third with 19%.

On the Tesco and Asda websites, customers mainly rely on internal search when browsing confectionery products, which is used by 38% and 25% of online shoppers, respectively. On Sainsbury’s website, internal search is popular with just 4% of visitors, where the majority of users (67%) prefer to look for branded confectionery items. The rest of the users seek unbranded items such as chocolate, sweets, mint, or gum.