Online grocery shopping on the brink of a popularity boom: analysts

Skyrocketing female labour participation rate is key.

Singapore is another step closer to achieving its Smart Nation dreams, as analysts predict that online grocery shopping is on the cusp of a popularity boom.

According to a report by RHB, Singapore consumers are thus far more comfortable with purchasing non-consumable goods like apparel, footwear, and electronics online. Channel checks revealed that online grocery sales only constitute about 1-2% of the total industry.

"We think pure online grocers are not able to gain sufficient scale to beat traditional brick-and-mortar players in the near term," RHB shared.

However, the climbing female labour participation rate in the Lion City is likely to spur the growth of online grocery shopping in the long run.

"Currently, the Big 3 supermarket players in Singapore—NTUC FairPrice, Dairy Farm and Sheng Siong—already have online shopfronts. NTUC airPrice further introduced a click-and-collect option in 2014, with 44 different locations available for collection," RHB stated.

RHB added that online grocery shopping should skyrocket in popularity over the course of the next decade.