Cost of fuel causing surge in online shopping

18 April 2011 - 14:14

UK consumers are choosing to leave the car out of the equation when enjoying a spot of retail as petrol prices soar and using e-commerce sites becomes a much more attractive option, according to the Financial Times.

A survey carried out by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) has found that 52 per cent of shoppers in the UK will be cutting back on the amount of shopping trips they take to the high street or out of town centres if the cost of filling a tank continues to rise as it has in recent months.

Instead the study found that many would prefer to use local stores or buy their groceries and luxuries via safe shopping online.

41 per cent of consumers said that the increase in petrol prices would encourage them to deliberately pick out supermarkets which have their own fuel stations where costs are kept competitively low by the retailers.

Close to 33 per cent of respondents said that online shopping would be their first port of call in the fight against the swelling costs of running a car for the same purpose.

IGD chief executive Joanne Denney-Finch said that the last two years of price hikes at the pump were putting pressure on consumers to think more carefully about how and why they use their vehicles.

Consumers who have young kids and those in the northern counties will be the hardest hit by the inflation of fuel costs.

For those who cannot make big cuts in their motoring budgets the survey discovered that by saving money with safe shopping online they would make cuts to their spending elsewhere, thus offsetting the investment they have to make in petrol so that they can go about their lives as normal.