M&S is reportedly “highly likely” to be planning a partnership with online grocery providers Ocado, according to e-commerce delivery expert ParcelHero.

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M&S is rumoured to be partnering with Ocado.

Following the supermarket retailer’s announcement that it planned to “ramp up its online groceries delivery service,” experts are speculating that a potential tie-up between itself and Ocado is close.

Pointing out that M&S’s online groceries current offering “seriously lags behind new ultra-convenient deliveries”, ParcelHero’s head of Consumer Research, David Jinks MILT, noted: “Sainsbury’s new Chop Chop same day/one-hour deliveries, Amazon’s Prime Now one-hour food service and Morrisons’ expanding Amazon tie-up, all point to the future of grocery sales.

“M&S badly needed to improve its grocery delivery offering.”

Explaining that in his opinion M&S doesn’t have the real range of products to supply the entire weekly groceries shop, Jinks explains: “M&S is all about convenience. An M&S app linked to one-hour deliveries would make a lot of sense.”

He added: “The same-day […] service needs strong infrastructure; but once developed, M&S could charge a high fee for a guaranteed one-hour grocery service.

“Ocado offers the capacity to deliver just such a service, on a plate as it were.”

According to Jinks, ParcelHero’s report, called 2030: The Death of the High Street, has forecast that large supermarkets are expected to become “white elephants with the demise of the weekly food shop”.

This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.