Londoners love online fashion shopping

Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 13:45 by Simon Crisp

A new study has found that there has been a marked increase in the amount of money that people who live in the UK's capital are spending on fashion items purchased online.

The report, published by Business Insights, found that there was an 11 per cent increase in fashion purchases made by Londoners during the first half of the year.

Indeed, it seems that fashion is an important part of the online retail market as a whole in London, with 8 per cent of the entire e-commerce market accounted for by this particular sector, according to the study.

In total, each customer is spending an average of seven per cent more on fashion items via safe shopping online than they were last year, with the frequency of purchases also going up by eight per cent in the first six months of 2012.

While standard fashion shopping has become more prevalent on the web, the luxury bracket has experienced the most significant growth, with a 28 per cent rise in sales registered year on year.

Fourteen per cent of people who bought luxury fashion items online this year had never done so before, which implies that a new area of the market is opening up, as Brits become more accustomed to splashing out via e-commerce sites.

This also means that the level of trust between retailers and consumers is growing in the e-commerce market, which bodes well for future expansion.

Seventy four per cent of luxury fashion purchases were made by 18 to 45 year olds, with study spokesperson, Sujata Bhatia, stating that e-commerce has altered the approach to clothes shopping taken by most people living in London.

Bhatia also said that the figures indicate that people now have more spending power to target at luxury items, which is causing a further shift in the market.