Online offers confectionery manufacturers and retailers a sweet opportunity: new study
A new study has found that of the 91% of UK adults who claim to buy confectionery, only 6% have bought it online.
The latest Online Shopper Intelligence report from Kantar Media Compete reveals that only 12% of the seven million online grocery shoppers in the UK visit a confectionery related page online, and just half of those actually make a purchase.
As a result, Kantar says that confectioners are missing out on a massive opportunity to improve their online retail presence and sales.
Of the three leading supermarket websites, Tesco.com attracted the highest number of confectionery shoppers with 59% visiting the supermarket’s confectionery section. This compares to 42% at Asda.com and 19% at Sainsburys.co.uk.
The research also reveals substantially differing shopping behaviours across the three websites. Internal search was used by 38% of shoppers at Tesco.com and 25% at Asda.com, while only 4% of confectionery shoppers on Sainsburys.co.uk used the search bar.
In addition, 67% of the Sianbury’s searched for branded confectionery products compared to 39% who searched for unbranded search terms such as chocolate, sweets, mint or gum. In contrast, 62% of visitors to Tesco and Asda’s online stores were found to be more likely to search for unbranded terms while 58% looked for their favourite branded product at Tesco and 53% at Asda.
Kantar Media Compete’s client services director and report author Sandy Livingstone said: “With so many forces driving total online shopping frequency, impulse categories are set to grow. But at the moment Confectionery is harder to find online and easier to miss if it’s not on the shopping list. There is a huge opportunity for confectionery manufacturers to make a greater appearance in online grocery baskets.”
Livingstone said that retailers and manufacturers could both gain from working together to develop a more tailored, and shopper-centric approach. He added: “This could include intercepting traffic at the right stage to serve a more impulse friendly product assortment , tailoring promotions to the type of shopper at each store, or looking specifically at how they search for confectionery items.”
