Once a month, we drive to a supermarket, fight for parking, jostle in the crowds, dodge the shopping carts and wait in long lines at the checkout. Some of us love this two-hour outing but some of us hate it and swear by online shopping.
“At the end of the week, I go on the website, pick the groceries that I need – usually the same as the week before, and pay. The next day we’ll have it delivered to the door,” said online shopper Mark Muscat. “The food comes to us – and it is all hassle-free.”
Yet the number of online customers for major supermarkets is still very low. The web is still not an option we consider when it comes to stocking up on weekly or monthly groceries.
Smart, Pavi and Tower Supermarkets, the three main supermarkets which have an online shopping facility, are all agreed that most Maltese still prefer to shop off the shelf.
“Till now we find that the online supermarket site is mostly used for convenience – such as to avoid carrying heavy items or in emergency cases where one cannot leave home for some reason or other,” said Philip Borg, director at Tower Supermarkets.
Mr Borg said that although there has been a growth in online sales, it is “not relevant enough” to affect supermarket sales. “The fact that Malta is small and a supermarket is just round the corner can be one of the reasons for online shopping not to have taken off as rapidly as one would expect,” he said.
Smart Supermarket was the first one to offer online shopping 13 years ago and although there has been a growth in online customers over the years it is still quite marginal.
At times our logs show that people have been doing the shopping at midnight or 1am
“If I take myself as an example, I buy a lot from foreign sites because I know I’ll be getting the products cheaper, however, with groceries, it’s not the case – the prices are the same,” said Mark Ciantar, director at Smart Supermarket. The bonus of online supermarket stores, he said, is a practical one, in that you can shop from the comfort of home.
Although there is no fixed age group, they have quite a few elderly customers.
“It works for them that they don’t have to lug heavy shopping,” he said. Online customers come from all over Malta – and even abroad. “It’s not the first time we had to pack and send Twistees for customers abroad,” Mr Ciantar quipped.
Most of the transactions, he said, are carried out in the evenings. “At times our logs show that people have been doing the shopping at midnight or 1am,” he said.
It is a similar pattern at Pavi supermarket. “Most of the online transactions are carried out after working hours – from evening into late at night,” said John Grima, marketing manager at Pavi Supermarket.
Mr Grima said online shoppers tend to belong to the younger generation or the over 40s, but the majority of Pavi customers still like to experience shopping in a traditional way.
Supermarket shopper Ian Zammit said that for him, the trip to the supermarket is a family outing. “Even though I end up squabbling with my wife on what food items to buy, deep down, we enjoy it,” he said.
He would also rather check out new items for himself and read the labels at the back of the products rather than see the items as an image online.
In the UK, online groceries make up about five per cent of the market, but it is estimated to rise up to 12 per cent by 2020. Food shopping accounts for nearly a third of all online spending, beating sales figures for computers, televisions and other electronic items.