Shoppers desert high street for web bargains- survey
- Added:
- Jan 08, 2009
UK retailers are facing a further hit in 2009 as shoppers desert the high street for better value shopping on the Internet, according to a new survey.
According to research by trade magazine New Media Age and Lightspeed Research, 36% of shoppers intend to shop more online and less on the high street in the coming year, increasing the gloom for the already battered UK high street retail industry.
This change is driven by the current economic climate, with around 89% believing that you can get a better price online and 68% of shoppers thinking that shopping online is cheaper than a visit to the high street, with the attendant costs of petrol, parking and transport.
The shift in shopping habits also looks to be covering more product areas than has traditionally been the case.
Shoppers were asked where they felt they could find the best value on a range of different products. Many have long recognised that they can get best value online for products such as Personal Electronics (70%), CDs and DVD’s (79%) and books (71%), but the research shows that shoppers are increasingly finding the best value online for traditional high street products such as clothes and shoes (38%), cosmetics (35%) and large electrical items (60%).
Online was thought to be better for range of products (with 81% believing online offered a better range), price (89%), ease of finding items (84%), convenience (78%) and price comparison (95%).
The high street, however, came out on top on customer service, with 70% preferring the human touch, and the lack of waiting time to receive a product, with 74% preferring the instantaneous access to goods offered in store.
Justin Pearse, editor of New Media Age, said: “Online shopping has been growing at an enormous pace for some time, but the general growth in consumer spending has hidden the impact of this on the high street retailers so far. Now that retail spend is being squeezed on every side this shift in consumer behaviour is going to become more pronounced and is going to have a bigger impact on the bottom line of the major retailers.
“Its widely expected that a number of big name retailers will follow the likes of Woolworths and MFI in the coming year – what these figures suggest is that we may see some of them move off the high street to become purely online businesses.”