E-commerce Projected to Dominate UK Retail Market in a Decade

Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - 13:38 by Graham Miller

By the time 2028 rolls around, the majority of all purchases made in the UK will be carried out via safe shopping online.

This is according to a new report from WBD which suggests that as the Millennial generation matures and makes up more of the nation’s total population than ever before, digital natives will spur on e-commerce spending at the expense of the high street.

Today the proportion of sales attributed to the web sits at around a fifth, but if current projections ring true, then this should rise to 53 per cent within the next 10 years.

Analysts identified a number of deciding factors which will fuel this shift, the first of which is simply down to the ways in which the population will change as time passes. People who were born with access to the internet available to them will become more common, and so almost everyone will be accustomed to shopping online as well as in-store.

Another point raised is that as e-commerce grows, the number of bricks-and-mortar locations which remain open will slump. This is clearly a concern for retailers that occupy the high street, yet the trend seems irreversible at this point.

The final catalyst for the dominance of online shopping is related to home deliveries. Experts believe that these will become faster and more affordable than ever, with same-day express services taking advantage of automated vehicles to provide more convenience to consumers.

Millennials are not the only ones putting their support into online shopping: those in Gen Z, who are slightly older than them, are similarly enamoured with it and are even more familiar with shopping from their smartphones. How high street retailers will respond to this power shift is still an uncertain point.