A trip to the local supermarket two days ago had me turn on my heels faster than you can say the word "coronavirus."

It was the day before Malaysia, where I live, declared a semi-lockdown, closing schools, offices, mosques and restaurants, but it may as well have been the day before the zombie apocalypse for the look of wild panic on shoppers' faces.

In a country where it is more usual for people to do small daily shops than one weekly one, suddenly people were filling trolleys to the brim with an apparent adoration for chickpeas, instant noodles and jarred curry sauce.

Checkout queues trailed back into the depths of the shop and shelves were sparsely populated with the odd dented tin or spilled rice bag.

Frustrated, I went home, but with a certain comfort that as one of the few who regularly uses online grocery shopping, I would simply grab my laptop, log on, make an order and wait a day. But it was not to be. Scouring all the online services available, slots were unavailable for days, in some cases weeks.

Driven by a fear of shortages, consumers in many markets are finding avenues outside of their usual comfort zone to buy food. And experts' feelings are that this might stick.

The technology has been available for a long time to enable a huge customer base for grocery e-commerce, but in few markets is it well-established and widely used.

China bucks the trend, of course, with around a third of all retail sales now made online. And interestingly, many market experts attribute this enormous success to another coronavirus: SARS, which acclerated the growth of the likes of Alibaba and JD.com -- then small startups -- into the multi-billion dollar companies they are today.

When coronavirus first hit in China, market analysts and exporters IntraFish spoke to noted the increase in online sales being made versus traditional channels less accessible in a lockdown.

The uptick in China was of note, but small, given the fact the channel was already heavily in use. In the West, however, coronavirus-induced increases in online food shopping are far more meaningful for a channel barely used by the majority of the population up until this point.

Amazon announced last week it would be hiring an extra 100,000 people in the face of rocketing demand for home delivery, and on the same day UK online grocery specialist Ocado announced a suspension of services while it restructured to meet demand. The warehouse-based service said it had 170,000 households to make food deliveries to in the next four days and was managing a "simply staggering" amount of traffic to its website and more demand for products and deliveries than it could meet.

Up until this point, despite the technology and interfaces available, many in the West have not taken advantage of online grocery shopping, probably largely down to the routine of how they have always shopped. The way we buy food is ingrained in our lives and until anything makes us question that or forces us out of it, the routine continues. Why wouldn't it?

Many people show a deep concern for climate change, but still drive their car to work. Until the car breaks down and they are forced by some extraordinary set of circumstances to cycle for a few weeks instead, the switch is largely avoided. But forced into a new normal, they discover the positives of a new routine and may well make a longer term switch.

It is basic psychology, and one that could mean mammoth changes for the seafood industry.

Online retailing brings myriad opportunities, but for seafood producers it also brings a certain set of challenges yet to be dealt with.

A product so traditionally reliant on being seen and smelled at purchasing will in the very near future have to rely on images, videos and written descriptions. There is no wetfish counter on a tablet or phone (and in fact far fewer wetfish counters than there were last week), so the consumer will have to go on their prior experience of a product and the written promise from the seller that the product is as advertised.

On the plus side, this puts the power of description back into the hands of industry members, which will have more influence over the online marketing of their product than they do the skills and knowledge of an awkward teenager at a supermarket fish counter. It brings the opportunity for storytelling, for reassurance and total traceability. And in a post-coronavirus age this will be more important than ever.

Opinion

SARS turbo-charged China's online retail industry. Will coronavirus do the same in the West?