60 billion pounds of online spending predicted for 2016

Friday, September 18, 2015 - 09:33 by Graham Miller

Consumers across the UK are collectively going to spend £60 billion shopping online next year, according to a survey carried out by the Centre for Retail Research.

One of the most interesting elements of this new study is that it has identified a clear division in spending habits between m-commerce fans and those who intend to only use desktop or laptop computers to carry out online purchases.

On average, the multichannel shoppers who will buy items from smartphones, tablets and PCs will spend £1,962 over the course of 2016. Meanwhile, those who stick solely to desktop shopping will have a much lower typical spend of £1014, according to Internet Retailing.

This reflects similar trends uncovered in earlier surveys which effectively show that people who are au fait with m-commerce are more likely to spend more money via safe shopping online than those who have yet to embrace the idea that they can make purchases from portable devices.

Report spokesperson, Giulio Montemagno, said that while retailers were rushing to make the online experience more personal for customers, there were still issues with mobile optimisation, which mean that many firms are failing to take full advantage of the popularity of m-commerce shopping.

Overall, the £60 billion online spend will equate to a national average of £1,372 being spent online across all adult consumers in the UK. Although, of course, there may be much bigger discrepancies between average expenditures when looking at individuals, as well as differences across age groups.

Those who shop from PCs do spend more per transaction than smartphone and tablet users, but analysts also found that they also make fewer visits to e-commerce sites and conduct purchases with less regularity than those who buy from their portable devices in a compulsive fashion.