Internet shopping could be worth £7.25bn pa, according to a survey of 2,000 British shoppers, published by Healey & Baker.
This amount represents 5% of the entire Great Britain shopping spend.
The youth market is currently the biggest user of Internet retailing. More than a third of the 16-24-year-old agegroup questioned said that it would use it for buying clothes, records and other lifestyle goods.
Similarly, a third of the AB social category is interested in electronic shopping.
The H&B report – Where People Shop 1995 – also shows that the local neighbourhood store is not in demise, as is sometimes assumed. Some 50% of all adults shop in their local shop twice a week, on average, for convenience shopping.
Paul Orchard-Lisle, senior partner at H&B, commented: “The predominant theme [of the study] is increasing diversity. There is growing interest in new forms of shopping. More than one-fifth of shoppers say that they are interested in electronic shopping. When one compares this with the 0.3% that currently use electronic shopping, it is easy to see the implications for the retail industry.
Orchard-Lisle added: “The most successful retailers will view the growth of electronic shopping as an opportunity to expand market share, as opposed to a threat, and will use it to enhance their existing offer.”
Another finding in the report was that, while the most-used form of retail is the local neighbourhood shop with 50% of all adults using it, town-centre supermarkets follow with 49%. With 44%, edge/out-of-town supermarkets are slightly less popular, whereas other town-centre shops attract 38% of shoppers.
