Nearly half of every pound spent online in 2015 was spent with a retailer that had no shops, new analysis from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests.
The ONS study, Shopping in shops that have no ‘shops’ says that in 2008, 5p in every £1 spent with retailers was spent online. By 2015 this had risen to 13p. And when people shopped online in 2015, 49% of spending – or 49p in every pound – went to retailers that had no permanent physical store.
This, says the analysis, is “not a blip – it’s actually a growing trend – up from 41p of every £1 spent in shops online in 2010.
”The report suggests while the supermarket was arguably the big retail development of the 20th century, making shopping less personal for many, the 21st century has been about shopping online – a development that some say has made shopping even less personal.
It suggests that while 88% of all UK shopping took place in physical stores in 2015, “the British public are not ready quite yet to move to an exclusively online shopping experience.”
Looking at how we shop online in this UK research.