Online vs in-store shopping – the stats point both ways

Rating: It really depends how you look at it

Today [December 26th 2012] – with the traditional Boxing Day, some four million UK High Street shoppers are expected to spend around £2.9 billion. The Times reported * Richard Dodd, the head of media for the British Retail Consortium (BRC), as saying “Spending after Xmas is dramatically less than before. The duration of the post Xmas sales is also relatively short, but there’s a small window of opportunity.” He added that he expected Xmas sales to be “acceptable” rather than “exceptional.” Yet the newspapers continue to print headlines indicating that online sales are “up”. That doesn’t mean that they’re totally replacing in-store purchasing, Also, there’s no breakdown on how much of this ‘online’ is mobile.

There’s not much money around as price comparison website, Pricerunner, discovered.

It says that almost half of the consumers it surveyed were not planning on buying anything online in the post-Xmas sales, anyway.

However, visits to retail websites are expected to reach 126 million today [Boxing Day 2012], up 31 per cent over 2011.

According to market analysts, Experian, online consumers are expected to have spent £225 million on Xmas Eve; £307 million on Xmas Day and today sales are predicted to be £472 million – bringing the total to around £1 billion.

It’s obvious, too that tablet users are going to be amongst the biggest online spenders. According to Xavier Garambois, Amazon’s vp for EU retail, “Xmas Day is our biggest day of the year for MP3 and Kindle Book downloads as many people are buying content from new devices that they have just received.”

Of course, tablets were amongst the major items discounted by major retailers such as Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and Amazon with Apple’s iPad Mini being a particular favourite.

Experian’ James Murray, the company’s digital insight manager, concludes, “The current market trends suggest that in the UK, Boxing Day will be the biggest day for online retail, with a massive 17 million hours spent online shopping on this day alone.”