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350 million hours expended on festive e-commerce

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - 11:07 by Mike Price

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Analysts predict that UK consumers will spend approximately 350 million hours conducting safe shopping online in the run-up to Christmas 2011.

A report from Experian Hitwise is indicating, along with many other sources, that this year will be a particularly significant one for the e-commerce sector, with more Brits than ever anticipated to be shunning the high street and booting up their computers in order to buy presents.

Spokesperson, James Murray, explained that the record breaking nature of 2011 will be compounded by the estimated 350 million hours of safe shopping online that will be carried out in December alone.

October was a busy month for e-commerce, with approximately 322 million hours spent on the web looking for bargains on gifts.

This month there will be enough online shopping enjoyed for every man, woman and child to have spent well over five hours getting to grips with e-commerce websites.

Of course in reality only about half of UK consumers are expected to shop on the web in December, which means the average time spent doing so will be closer to 10 hours.

There has been much debate over where the majority of consumers will choose to spend their hours on e-commerce sites, because employers are worried that this could seriously eat into the working day and cost companies billions of pounds in the process, due to lost productivity.

In reality, it will be difficult to gauge how and where people are getting their shopping done, although with peaks occurring during lunchtimes and evening sessions, it looks like Brits are being relatively responsible and eating into their free time with e-commerce rather than getting it done when they are on the clock at work.

Even if five or ten hours sounds like a lot of time to spend buying presents online, it has to be considerably less stressful than spending an equivalent amount of time on the high street.