Statistics published this week by Mintel suggest that the number of people taking advantage of safe shopping online to arrange for grocery deliveries is still rising, albeit at a lower rate than in previous years.

BBC News reports that in 2018 around 45 per cent of Brits made at least one e-commerce grocery order, which is actually a drop of four percentage points compared with 2016’s levels.

Part of this may be due to complications that customers encounter when buying groceries online, with almost two-thirds of respondents to the report admitting that they had suffered some form of hang-up or error with the e-commerce process in the last 12 months.

Study spokesperson Nick Carroll said that while online grocery sales are growing fairly quickly compared with the industry as a whole, there are signs that interest in this activity is more muted and that it may plateau sooner than anticipated.

Experts expect that within the next three years around a tenth of all grocery sales will be made via the web, meaning that the vast majority will still take place in stores. At the moment the share of the market associated with e-commerce orders is seven per cent.

Younger consumers tend to be more willing to buy food online, while those aged 45 and over are generally suspicious about the quality of the produce that they will receive if it is picked, packed and shipped to them directly. This suggests that older consumers value the ability to choose the items to pop in their shopping trolleys at the supermarket over the convenience of being able to order everything from the comfort of their own homes.

Supermarkets may need to take action to address this issue if they want to continue growing grocery sales in the online space.