Internet Shopping in UK Grows by 38%
The current turmoil in the UK economy brought about by rising food and fuel cost coupled with the credit crunch is bringing about significant shift in the shopping habit of consumers. Shoppers are deserting the high street for online shopping in search or better deal, this helped online sales in the first half of this year reach £26.5bn for the first time, this is an increase of 38% on the same period last year, according to e-commerce group IMRG and Capgemini.
Online retailers are usually able to undercut their high street counterpart because they generally have less overheads. Apart from items bought online being cheaper than the high street, shopping online is also less stressful and cheaper because your purchases are delivered to your door, saving on the cost of fuel for driving to the high street and parking cost.
Though web-based shopping continued to outperform the High Street according to the report, the credit crunch and rising inflation also affected online sales when compared with the growth experienced by Internet sales in 2007.