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Festive boom for online shopping
Internet shopping among UK consumers soared almost 50% in the 10 weeks before Christmas, a report has found.
Shoppers spent £4.98bn online during the period, compared with £3.3bn for the same time a year earlier, according to e-commerce trade body IMRG.
For 2005 as a whole, it calculated that spending over the internet in the UK totalled £19.2bn, 32% more than 2004.
Overall retail sales rose by 4% in December compared to the same month in 2004, official figures have shown.
The figure from the Office for National Statistics was in line with expectations.
IMRG managing director Jo Tucker said the 50% growth in online sales represented a "step change in retailing at Christmas".
Retail landscape
Some 24 million UK consumers shopped online in 2005, spending on average £816 each during the year, and £208 in the run-up to Christmas.
IMRG now forecasts that e-commerce will grow by 36% in 2006, with sales worth £26bn.
"There can no longer be any doubt that the internet is a major part of the retail landscape, and that it will dominate the retail agenda for the next several years," said Ms Tucker.
Of those retailers that have embraced the internet, Tesco said a record one million customers bought through its website in November and December, while department store John Lewis recorded online and catalogue sales of more than £100m in 2005.
"Over the last seven years attitudes towards online shopping have gone through a seismic shift," said Richard Lloyd-Owen, head of consumer business at accountants Deloitte.
"Once labelled as the best way to get good bargains and cheaper goods, shoppers now flock to the web for different reasons."
Courtesy of BBC news online, January 2006
This year, Christmas will fall on a Monday - 12 December to be exact. Well, at least for online retailers.
Like all other retailers they do their best business of the year in the run-up to Christmas, although for obvious reasons their shopping season peaks a week early.
After all it takes time to get presents from the virtual shop front to the real-world doorstep.
But there is one big difference: while most High Street retailers are gloomy, online retailing keeps on booming.
About 60% of UK retailers expect their sales to stagnate or fall this Christmas, suggests the Christmas Retail Survey 2005 compiled by Deloitte. That's up sharply from last year's figure of 35%.
In contrast, online shops can expect double-digit growth.
'People are coming online'
In the UK, where - compared to the US - online retail is still more of a toddler, growth could be more than 40%, e-retailer lobby group IMRG predicts.
According to the Deloitte survey, 6% of UK consumers plan to do the bulk of their festive shopping online this year, but this is a 50% increase on 2004.
"This Christmas, people who shop online spend more, and people who never spent money online are coming online," says David MacDonald, head of retail advertising at Google UK.
In the run-up to Christmas online sales will make up 9% of the UK total, says Deloitte. Lobby group IMRG is even more bullish, claiming that last year the sector accounted for 15% of spending.
It works for small companies as well
At Getethical.com, managing director Tony Cook expects to do a quarter of his annual trade in the four weeks between 15 November and 15 December, with the real peak during the first two weeks of December.
Traffic on his website will soar by 200% during that period, he says.
The need to be online
"Shoppers are not only planning to buy more online, but are also increasingly using the internet to research their purchases," say Deloitte's researchers.
More than two-thirds of retailers are convinced that they need a website to stand a chance in the Christmas business. Last year, just over half of them made the connection, according to Deloitte.
And there is another important driver for online shopping: search engines and comparison websites like shopping.com, Google's Froogle and Yahoo's Kelkoo.
Nearly 90% of UK online shoppers used search engines to find their gift of choice, according to a recent Media Screen survey.
Courtesy of the BBC news online, November 2005.
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Tesco is bombarding UK consumers with a massive e-mail marketing campaign.
Way ahead of its supermarket rivals, it issued 44 separate e-mail campaigns last month, more than Sainsbury, Asda, Waitrose and Somerfield put together.
According to e-mail marketing firm Interactive Prospect Targeting Services, Tesco is blitzing the nation with 16-20 million e-mails per month.
Tesco e-mail campaigns offer deals on everthing from DVDs, books and flowers to wine, gardening kit and gym gear.
Targeted
"Tesco has more information on more people than its rivals, thanks to one of the most sophisticated customer data-collection operations in the UK," said Mark Smith, chief executive of marketing company themutual.net.
Tesco.com sales were up 31% at £401m in the first half of this year.
It deals with about 170,000 orders per week, compared with its nearest rival, Sainsburys.co.uk, which gets about 38,000.
Courtesy of BBC news online, November 2005.
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High street stores are facing a tough Christmas with more shoppers turning to the internet, a report has said.
A survey of 1,000 people by analysts Mintel suggests almost 40% of British adults will buy some of their gifts online - up from 22% four years ago.
The survey suggests 15% of people now prefer to do their Christmas shopping online - up 5% on last year.
Mintel says the top gifts this year will be music, videos, DVDs and computer software all of which can be bought over the internet.
"Tesco on one hand and internet retailers on the other will take the majority of retail growth and the High street is going to be squeezed in between the two."
Internet shoppers tend to be younger and relatively affluent, according to Mintel's UK Retail Briefing report.
Courtesy of BBC news online, December 2005.
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