How Australia’s big three battle for online grocery customers

19-Oct-2017 - Last updated on 19-Oct-2017 at 14:37 GMT

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CupoNation claims to have drawn a complete picture of the e-grocery landscape in Australia, concluding that Amazon’s forthcoming entry into the market will not be easy, Facebook is by far the most used Social Media channel by e-grocers, and that Woolworths is still the “king of the Google search”.

To conduct its study, the online savings platform took data from research by Nielsen, which predicts that the e-grocery market will be worth A$10.6bn (A$8.33bn) by 2020.

It collected and analysed data from 2017, such as monthly visits to stores’ websites, and calculated general interest in them through search engines.

CupoNation then broke their data down into two main areas: the popularity of these e-grocers, and how people show interest towards them.

By ranking the average monthly visits to the three most favoured Australian online groceries, Woolworths was shown to be the clear winner, followed by Coles and Aldi. The monthly visits to Amazon Australia counted an average of 4.11m visits—about two times fewer visits than Woolworths, suggesting the American giant has much ground to make up over the incumbents.

The study found that the number of followers on social media is mostly dominated by Facebook. While Coles has the highest reach on Facebook and Twitter, Woolworths leads on Instagram.

In total, over the three platforms, Coles reaches roughly 1.32m users, followed by Woolies with 1.11m users, and Aldi’s 570,000 followers.

“Social media has become one the essential if not the most important branding channel. We came to the surprise of finding out that these online grocers are all present in the most important Social media platforms,” CupoNation said.

The researchers also looked at how consumers find online grocery stores, deducing that it “all starts with a Google search”.

They found that online consumers have developed some mechanisms to find and evaluate what they are looking for, by looking into the general interest on Google towards the three online grocers in Australia.

Woolworths is still ‘king’ with an average of 1.22m searches per month, followed by Coles, with 1m searches, and Aldi’s 450,000 searches.

Coopers ends long wait for new ale addition

Coopers Brewery has added the first new beer to its lineup in 13 years, with the launch of an ale to meet growing demand for fruity, easy-drinking beers.

Coopers Session Ale is a “refreshing summer style beer with tropical fruit notes and an aromatic hop character, thanks to the addition of Galaxy and Melba hop varieties into the brew,” the company said in a statement.

Marketing director Cam Pearce said the Session Ale fills a niche in Coopers’s range of ales.

“It is brewed using our traditional secondary fermentation process that eliminates the need for additives or preservatives,” he said.

“Our brewers have used pale and wheat malt and a combination of Galaxy and Melba hops along with a ‘secret ingredient’ to brew Session Ale.

“The hops have been added late in the brewing process for bitterness and then dry hopped to extract flavour and aroma. This gives a moderate level of after-palate dry-hopped bitterness to balance the estery flavours produced by the famous Coopers Ale yeast.”

With a golden straw colour and an alcohol level of 4.2 per cent ABV, Pearce also said that the Session Ale “has the potential to become very popular among consumers looking for a premium quality, refreshing, summer-style beer.”

The release of the beer follows earlier limited releases of Family Secrets Amber Ale and Brew A IPA to the on-premises market.

However, unlike these two beers, Session Ale has been released under its own distinctive blue rondel, bringing it in line with the rest of the Coopers family, alongside Sparkling Ale, Pale Ale, Stout, Dark Ale and Mild Ale.