Click and collect market to be worth £6.5 billion in 2019

Thursday, September 18, 2014 - 10:15 by David Aiken

A new report from analyst organisation, Verdict, has predicted that consumers in the UK will be ordering £6.5 billion in products online, to then be collected in-store by the year 2019, according to the Guardian.

Click & collect services are already popular, but the uptick anticipated over the next half-decade will leave this market 82 per cent bigger than it is at the moment. This is obviously positive news for bricks and mortar retailers that are still reliant on maintaining a high street presence, since in-store collection gets people who would normally shop online to make the trip to a real world outlet.

Back in 2012, only half of consumers in the UK had used click & collect to make a purchase, but this has risen to over two thirds of us in 2014. And since our country remains a global leader in terms of e-commerce uptake, this could be a sign that other nations will soon follow suit in embracing this approach to retail.

The biggest proportion of the current click & collect spend is attributed to fashion items and footwear, which is perhaps unsurprising as plenty of people prefer to try on clothes in-store before they decide that they want to buy them. With safe shopping online, it is possible to reserve an item and collect it locally, with the option to return it immediately if it does not fit or is not as appealing in the flesh.

Supermarkets are set to be the biggest beneficiaries of the click & collect boom, with sales expected to rise 246 per cent, as customers seek to avoid scouring the aisles for items they need. People buying expensive electronics are also keen on click & collect, although this area of the market is relatively mature, so analysts do not expect growth to be quite so significant.