Coles’ online business is seeing a major surge with new figures released by the supermarket chain stating that e-commerce sales had reached the equivalent of five bricks and mortar stores. Speaking at a CEDA event in Sydney, Conrad Harvey, Coles Group Manager for IT said that the company’s move into online had been highly successful so far. “It’s equivalent to five or so supermarkets in sales and it’s growing dramatically,” he said.

Although Harvey did not reveal financial estimates of Coles online performance, the company recorded $US32 billion in sales for the 2011 fiscal year and operates a network of 742 supermarkets across the country. Each store generated about $43 million.

Although Harvey acknowledged the importance of an effective multichannel strategy in an interview with The Australian, he asserted that e-commerce would not replace the supermarket’s established business model anytime soon.

“We see it (online) as a complementary service, rather than a supplementary service. We see it as an opportunity to offer a broader range of services to our customers,” he said.

“I think the adoption is definitely growing and is quite high in some areas but I think we’re a while away from being a predominantly online player.”

In the last year, Coles has taken a series of steps to accelerate its multichannel offering, including the launch of Click & Collect kiosks to allow customers to purchase online and pick up in-store.

Although Coles takes a progressive view of social networking and near field technology, it remains skeptical about cloud computing, citing the severity of the fallout if something were to go wrong in the cloud as the reason why it would not adopt this technology anytime soon.

It is also optimistic about the potential of social networking for connecting with customers but is cautious about wholeheartedly embracing it because of corporate restrictions.

To read the full story, follow this link: www.powerretail.com.au/news/coles-sees-major-surge-in-online-sales/