Customers can pick up their purchase in only one Cora store in western Bucharest for the time being, but the service will expand to more hypermarkets at some point, the retailer’s officials say, adding home delivery of the products bought online will become available some time next year.
Cora officials say they expect Cora Drive to generate 5% of the sales next year, or EUR15 million to EUR20 million, according to ZF estimates. The retailer therefore wants a share of 10% to 15% of the online food market.
“10,000 articles are included in this system, 1,500 of which fresh products,” the retailer representatives say. Most of the products available through coradrive are foods, complemented by household items and cosmetics.
In a time when electronics, cosmetics, clothes and books are already bought online, food was the last stand not yielding to the Internet in Romania.
The officials of rival hypermarket, supermarket and convenience store chain Carrefour, which introduced its own online store in Romania this spring, have recently said online food sales in the country were not higher than 1% of the total food retail. This would put sales of food online at EUR100 million to EUR150 million, according to ZF estimates.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)