A year ago the Co-op announced plans to launch an online grocery shopping service. Now, today’s Evening Standard reports that they’ve quietly dumped the attempt having found that it merely cannibalises instore spending.
According to the Standard, the Co-op will now focus on revamping their smaller stores aiming to win market share from Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local. However don’t think that the Co-op are ignoring the Internet entirely, they still have their banking and funerals as well as their insurance travel and Electrical stores online and of course they still have the Co-operative Food website, it’s just not transactional.
The Co-op are also hosting Amazon Lockers in many of their local stores which must increase footfall and they don’t ignore eBay either. Although you won’t find a Co-op branded shop, they trade as on eBay and since July 2012 have amassed almost 50,000 feedback.
Having trialled click and collect, the Co-op still have their “Spend £25 in-store and get free home delivery at a time of your choice” service running.
The Co-op may attempt to launch a click and collect grocery service again at some point in the future, but for the moment, for one business at least, the Internet would appear not to be the cash cow everyone assumes it always is.
24 Responses
If the article below is anything to go by it’s no wonder they have decided not to bother, if the big 4 supermarkets can’t make any money from it what chance has the coop, they are already losing enough money.
https://money.aol.co.uk/2014/07/28/supermarkets-making-massive-loss-from-online-shopping/
And my local Co-op is my MyHermes drop off…. so they still get some footfall from that.
To me co-op (most run by Scotmid) are only useful for small shops (when passing). The range and pricing is not good enough to make me go out of my way to shop with them.
Most people will have a choice of online supermarkets and are less tied to a supermarket that has a local store to them.
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Ah the good old Co-op….
I am now 65 and when i was a youngster they were everywhere in East London. Department stores, food stores, funeral directors & so many different businesses & a Bank. Stratford East had them all
At some point in the mid 80’s they subtracted back up north & now just a few small food stores remain.
Somehow they just didn’t stand & fight the likes of Tesco’s.
I find it sad that their current situation is all about the take over of a debt ridden building Society, that bought this once great institution to it’s knees.
agree with the comments on recieving front of shelf items – with short dates on them, so much so that i have ordered in “meals”, or ingredients for meals for that day and the next couple, and they have all had to be used on one of the days. good job with some items you can stretch it a day or two.
mainly use them for bulky items now, such as cases of things, and the other half gets fresh fruit and veg from lidl and aldi, we have used them lately and they have a place for us alongside the big weekly shop with the big 4.
i think they may be loosing business as a whole on the delivery front, or it may be competition, but i have seen a lot of emails offering me free delivery (can cost from £2-8 depending on times of day i could get delivered), and also lots of promos for buying a yearly or monthly delivery pass, eg £20-50 code that gives “free” delivery.
In a way it’s a shame it’s gone down this road but I guess the online market is so competitive these days, even the big players can’t compete!
The trial was run from my local Coop store, the staff are terrible and the area really wasn’t suited to the trial. The majority of people, 60% are over 60 years old, and I know many of them will be used to internet shopping, but when its only 2 minutes to the Coop with a big free car park then there really is no point, its open from 7am til 10pm every day. Seemed completely pointless. Coop have now sold this store to Asda 🙁