Etail trends
The UK online spend over Christmas was unsurprisingly a record £15.2 billion. With more than 80% of adults shopping online in 2007 this trend is set to continue according to the IMRG (via Retail Bulletin). E commerce sales overall grew 50% last year with £46.6 billion being spent in 2007.
High street retailers have an obvious advantage with the ability to deliver and control stock and in theory (but not always in practice) an understanding and face to face experiene of how to treat their customers, however some of the major players are still missing out with a lack of ability to buy their products online (browse online, shop instore … how dull), George, Matalan, TK Maxx and Primark, to name but four in a sector that jumped 28% in December last year.
Gloomy recession aside it’s pretty easy to predict that 2008 will see these figures continue to rise and that’s with the same retailers selling to the same consumers. Imagine if some of the bigger high street names got their online act together and started some real online competition, how exciting and innovative their websites could be. So a prediciton for 2008, a fashion retailer wil launch a transactional website this year and it will do really, really well, simply because there isn’t a lot of choice on the online high street.
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Thank you for some good news! It’s a bunch of naysayers over here in the U.S. about holiday shopping sales. Glad to read something positive.
Also, did you know that shopping actually makes us happy?! Check out more today on Retail Design Diva. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite happy shopping item/retailer.
Cheers,
Heather
Ah but does shopping really make us happy? According to a recent news item on BBC “misery creep” is amongst us. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7189947.stm … then I would like the opportunity to give it a try, I haven’t been out shopping for ages.