Survey finds British consumers eager to harness e-commerce

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 12:17 by Simon Crisp

A new report discovered that a tenth of consumers in the UK use the web to buy something at least once a day, while just over a third of us do most of our shopping on the internet.

Broadbandchoices.co.uk surveyed 2000 UK adults and just 32 per cent of those questioned said that they still use the high street for most of their purchases.

Each month the average person will spend £113 shopping online, which is a significant increase from the 56 spent a decade ago. With 10 per cent making daily online purchases there is clearly a real eagerness for web-based retail among British consumers.

Report spokesperson Dominic Baliszewski said that the benefits of online shopping were obvious to most consumers and it is thus easy to explain why so many of us love using the web to buy goods and services.

Continued growth for safe shopping online seems likely because 25 per cent of respondents said that they are going to spend more via the web in 2013 than they did in 2012. This means that, although usage of e-commerce sites is reaching saturation point, there are still many people who will be giving the industry a boost through increased spending.

Of course this does mean that the high street faces the prospect of continually falling sales, with a recent study from the Centre for Retail Research suggesting that one in every five bricks and mortar outlets could be closed by 2018.

A multichannel approach is the main thing which can save traditional retailers from extinction and a shakeup of British high streets is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if it means that big chain stores can make way for smaller independent outlets over the coming years.