Global online grocery market size in 2015-2020, by country

In 2015, China was the world leader in terms of market value of online grocery shopping, and they are expected to retain that position in 2020. Over that time period, the value of the Chinese market is expected to quadruple. This reflects the general trend of online grocery shopping taking a larger percentage of the grocery market each year.

The grocery landscape

Online grocery shopping is facilitated either by brick-mortar-supermarkets offering pick-up and delivery as a feature of multi-channel retailing (selling both in traditional offline channels as well as online outlets), or by standalone e-commerce retailers.

China’s strengths

The size of China’s online grocery market can be explained both by demographics and technological adoption rates. China currently has the largest population in the world and, after India, has over four times the population of the next largest country, the United States. More importantly, it has the highest online shopping penetration rate and the most e-commerce sales as percentage of total retail sales of any country in the world.