New data from Adobe reveals UK online spending reached £8.3bn in April, up 2.5% on the same period last year, bringing total online spending for 2025 so far to £34.4bn (+2.5% YoY).
With consumer confidence falling amid economic uncertainty, rising high street prices, and household costs, UK shoppers were said to have headed online to secure the cheapest products.
Adobe’s data – which monitors actual online transactions from billions of visits to retail sites from UK consumers and tracks the online prices of 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories – found that prices across the e-commerce landscape were 3.5% lower in April compared with the previous month, with grocery prices down 1.5% over the same period.
April’s figures also found that more UK consumers were economising by substituting their normal products for cheaper alternatives. On average, the share-of-sales of the most expensive goods across all online retail categories fell by 3.7% compared with the previous month, and by 10.4% compared to April 2024.
The increase in trading down in April compared with March represents a reversal of the spending trends observed in previous years in which the share-of-sales of the most expensive products typically increases by 3-5% from March to April.
“Economic uncertainty and expectations of rising prices and living costs made consumers reluctant to spend in April,” said Taylor Schreiner, head of Adobe Digital Insights.
“Online shoppers are only getting better at finding great deals and the lowest prices for their items. For retailers, though, the trend of ’trading down’ to cheaper versions of the same item highlights another challenge: How to attract price-sensitive buyers while protecting already squeezed margins.”
NAM Implications:
- Confirmation that consumers are seeking cheaper alternatives to their regular products.
- And if they find the compromise less than anticipated…
- …it will cost to win them back.
- Online simply makes it easier to cover more ground in their searches.
- Over to you…
