Is Marks & Spencer missing a trick with online shopping?

At a Marks & Spencer press conference at the end of last year I asked the boss Marc Bolland why he wasn’t launching an online grocery service. Food is the runaway success of the business, I argued – surely customers would relish the opportunity to buy your premium offering from the comfort of their sofas? Aren’t you missing a trick?

His response was emphatic. There was no way M&S would go down that unprofitable path, he said. All the other retailers have tried it and so far, none of them are making any money. It’s not for us.

And yet today, a rival, Morrisons, is making a £216m bet on the web. Made necessary, its boss Dalton Philips said, because online is where the market’s at. It’s the way customers increasingly want to shop. You have no choice but to be online.

You can argue the merits of the tie up with Ocado (has Morrisons overpaid?) and whether or not Waitrose will stomach it, but I think, in essence Mr Dalton is right and Mr Bolland’s got it wrong.

The market for online grocery shopping is only going one way and that’s up. Sales are predicted to double to £11bn in the next five years according to IGD Retail Analysis.

So it’s true, grocers’ online operations may be loss leaders right now. But if demand increases the way it’s forecast to, Morrison’s prediction that its online offering could turn a profit in three years isn’t inconceivable.

And having invested hundreds of millions of pounds in technology since its inception 13 years ago, it’s similarly credible that Tim Steiner and his techno wizards at Ocado could also soon begin to post profits too.

For sure, it may take longer. But that profits will come down the line seems to me inevitable. As chief executive of a troubled M&S with one of the market’s strongest food offerings, why would you want to miss out on that opportunity?

Perhaps Mr Bolland should make a quiet call to Mr Steiner and run the numbers.

Follow Siobhan Kennedy on Twitter