Will your shopping basket include a new husband or wife…

Dating sites are big business.

The NASDAQ quoted match.com for example, one of the largest dating websites, recently paid $50 million in cash to purchase the US online dating company OkCupid.

Years ago you would more than likely have met your future partner face to face at some social event whereas nowadays there is a high chance that you’ll meet your future husband or wife on the internet.

The online dating industry is also great at segmenting the market. In addition to the more mainstream sites such as match.com and friendfinder.com there are more niche dating sites out there including for example:

tallfriends.com – where as the name suggests, you can meet tall people;

farmersonly.com – to meet people that work in the farming industry;

scientificmatch.com – which uses your DNA to match you with suitable partners;

stdmatch.net – an online dating site for people with STDs;

womenbehindbars.com – where you can meet women that are currently in jail (this has the added advantage of not having to pay for an expensive meal on your first date).

Last month the UK supermarket chain Asda announced that it was moving into the dating business. In a rather unusual extension of their product range they launched asdadating.co.uk which matched single people according to their shopping characteristics.

Users completed a questionnaire about their favourite foods and shopping habits and were then shown individuals that had similar shopping habits. They could literally compare their shopping baskets and find love.

Alas however for those people that completed the survey, the site has since been closed down as it was a marketing project for Valentine ’s Day and turned out not to be a genuine new product launch.

Those people that had completed the questionnaire with a shopping basket showing 7 “meals for one” are no doubt disappointed but the supermarket dating concept isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Could we see one of the other big supermarket chains starting up a real supermarket dating agency in the near future?