• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, June 20, 2011

Nielsen and MyWebGrocer are forming a new partnership to track the fast-growing area of online grocery sales. While online grocery shopping accounts for just 2% of total U.S. consumer packaged goods sales, it is expected to explode in the next few years, growing from $12 billion now to $25 billion by 2014.

That increase "is because we're seeing big changes in how consumers connect to retailers, between the growth of mobile and the growth of iPads," John Burbank, president, Strategic Initiatives, Nielsen, tells Marketing Daily. "Consumers can now shop anywhere they might be, at any given moment. That's a big change from 10 years ago, when they had to be at their home computers." He adds that consumer acceptance of online grocery shopping is considerably higher in Europe.