Christmas 08 set to raise records for online shopping

Archived article dated Tuesday January 22nd 2008

E-tailers enjoyed a record breaking rise in Christmas shopping online last year, according to the latest figures from the IMRG which revealed a £15.2 billion spend.

And this growth is expected to continue, with over 50% of the UK's online shoppers intending to increase their online spend in the run up to Christmas 2008- according to the latest Logan Tod Online Shopping Index, out today.

“More than 80% of adults in the UK shopped online in 2007, which is a rise of 5% on 2006's figures,” says Matthew Tod, Chief Executive at Logan Tod. “We believe that the key drivers for Christmas 2008's predicted growth will be the older age groups. The over 40s and over 50s are still discovering the benefits of shopping online and this trend will doubtless continue to next year.”

“It is worth noting, however, that the 35-44 year old age group should still be the ones doing the most shopping online overall. It is the 44+ age group where the bigger opportunity lies to drive growth for most store owners” adds Matthew Tod.

Last year's Index from the e-commerce consultancy estimated that the largest area of growth in adult shoppers would be amongst light shoppers and this year's figures confirm the prediction - revealing an increase of almost 15% in this category. There was a less than 10% increase in both the medium and heavy shopper categories.

“It's encouraging to see how accurate the Index is at predicting the coming year” says Matthew Tod. “We said the key growth area would be in light shoppers, although even we didn't anticipate such a large increase in this particular segment.” As with last year's results, many UK shoppers find the convenience of 24 hour shopping (67%) and lack of crowds (68%) the key benefits to shopping online over the Christmas period. However, the most important consideration for shoppers (69% of those questioned) is price. “Price seems to be more of an issue with consumers than in the previous Online Shopping Index report” says Matthew Tod. “This means that online competition is really heating up and for e-tailers to continue to be competitive they must ensure their sites focus on combining value with best possible service to the key age groups to grow revenue during Christmas 2008.”

Tagged as: online shopping | logan todd

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