Grocery e-tailer Tesco.com might soon be delivering shopping to doorsteps in Seoul, chief executive officer John Browett told a retail conference yesterday.

The group already has hypermarkets in Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea, but online operations only in Britain and Ireland.

"Clearly we want to take the model international. We have already taken it to Ireland," Mr Browett told the conference. He added that Korea and even the US might be next.

Tesco.com, which took its first order in December 1996, is now the third-largest retail portal in the UK, beaten only by Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, according to the Nielsen ratings quoted by Tesco. Mr Browett estimated last year's sales at about £250m - up from £125m in 1999.

He attributed Tesco.com's success to its ability to draw supplies from the parent company's national network of supermarkets, reducing costs and raising efficiency.

A report last month showed that online's share of the overall grocery market remains small. In Britain, internet grocery shopping accounts for only 0.4% of the market.

In the US, the rate is 0.33%, and in Germany and Italy 0.1% and 0.02%. Web food shopping is forecast to grow rapidly. According to Datamonitor, the online grocery market is worth $3.5bn, and is set to become the biggest business-to-consumer sector.
Reuters