The novel coronavirus has forced the nation's notoriously fussy food shoppers to abandon doubts about online grocery stores, sending retailers such as Aeon Co. scrambling to meet a surge in delivery demand.
Although shoppers in Japan aren't alone in going online during the outbreak, the shift is remarkable for a country that had been expected to take years to embrace online food shopping because of a zeal for fresh and perfectly presented produce.
"I think that this pandemic has triggered an inflection point in the adoption of grocery e-commerce," said Luke Jensen, executive director of Ocado Group, hired to build a grocery e-commerce business for Japanese retail giant Aeon.