Marks & Spencer to launch online grocery shopping service
Marks & Spencer (M&S) is working on a service that will allow customers to order food online and have it delivered to their homes.
Marks & Spencer to launch online grocery shopping service.
A trial of the service is set for this autumn in a bid to capitalize on the fastest growing part of the UK’s £180bn grocery market. The retailer already sells a limited variety of food and alcohol online but this would be the first time it has made its wider grocery offer available online.
The emergence of AmazonFresh, which lets shoppers order groceries at lunchtime and have the produce delivered to their homes for dinner, is testament to the scale of the opportunity and the competition M&S will face should it decide to turn the trial into a full-blown service.
“We continue to review food online carefully,” said Steve Rowe, chief executive of M&S is reported to have said by the Guardian, which first revealed the new. “It has not cost us anything over the last five years by not being online with food. Our customers haven’t moved yet, but they will and we need to ensure that we are ready with the right response. There are unanswered questions over what this means for M&S and we have a team looking at this now with a view to undertaking a soft trial in the autumn.”
Until now, the bulk of M&S’s digital investments have been ploughed into other parts of the business such as its loyalty card offering. While food has consistently been a strong performer for the business in recent years, the business has opted to bide its time as some of its peers have pushed forward with delivery services of their own.