The UK Online Retailing report offers comprehensive insight and analysis of the online channel in the UK, the main trends and hot issues, major players and consumer shopping behaviour. It also provides forecasts to 2027 across key retail sectors
The pandemic forced more consumers to spend online as many physical locations closed, bringing forward growth in the digital channel. This led to online spend falling in 2022 as the online and offline channels rebalanced and many shoppers returned to stores.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, online specialists such as Amazon and ASOS had dominated the online channel in the UK, achieving phenomenal growth rates year-on-year. While pureplays will continue to lead the way online given their investment in technology and innovation, these retailers will be under greater threat from multichannel retailers that now have more developed online capabilities.
Scope
- The food & grocery sector online penetration continues to increase out to 2027, with it forecast to be the fastest growing sector online having become more established during the pandemic.
- Following significant peaks and troughs caused by the pandemic across 2020 to 2022, annual online growth is forecast to stabilise at around 5% from 2024 onwards with digital growth once again outpacing spend growth via physical stores.
- The ease of comparing prices has remained the biggest driver in online shopping, with two thirds of online shoppers believing that online shopping is better than physical shopping in this aspect.
Reasons to Buy
- Use our in-depth consumer and market insight to learn about the growth of different sectors online and the issues affecting the online market to ensure you capitalise on high growth areas such as click & collect and third-party pickup in a given sector.
- Understand why and how consumers shop online for different products to capitalise on the growth in the online market.
- Understand which retailers have the most popular online propositions in each sector, enabling you to better compete with market leading players and enhance your own online propositions.