A year after unveiling its e-commerce site, Meijer will now begin offering grocery and dry good items bought in bulk from www.meijer.com in its "Grocery by the Case" programme. Unlike existing online grocery services that charge a delivery fee, Meijer will offer free shipping for orders of US$150 and more.

This marks the third innovative grocery program that the US retailer has introduced in the past three months. Recently, Meijer began test-marketing a personal shopping program called Grocery Express that enables shoppers to order groceries online and have them personally delivered to their car at the local Meijer parking lot.

This past summer, the company launched Meijer Mealbox, a web-based widget that allows customers to plan a week's worth of meals in minutes by providing access to thousands of Meijer recipes, ingredients, coupons and special promotions.

A recent study by Forrester Research found that consumers spend approximately US$6 billion annually for online purchases of food, beverage and grocery items. The study also projected that online grocery sales will more than double (US$13.7 billion) within the next four years.

"Grocery by the Case" is a very user-friendly and easy-to-navigate site that makes for a smooth online shopping experience," said Rob Fleener, vice president of marketing and e-commerce for Meijer. "Coupled with the fact that we'll be the only major player offering free shipping, this service will certainly be well received by our customers."