As shoppers continue to shift away from visiting physical stores and gravitate towards the convenience of shopping via digital channels, UK online spend is set to reach £75bn by 2024, rising 30.4% over the next five years, according to research by GlobalData.
The data and analytics company’s latest report – ‘UK Online Retailing 2019-2024’ – reveals that the online channel is forecast to account for 19.8% of UK retail spend by 2024.
Despite the online channel making up only a relatively small proportion of the food & grocery market (7.3% in 2019), this sector is expected to be the biggest contributor in terms of online value growth over the next five years, rising £5.0bn to reach £16.2bn, making it the second-largest product category behind clothing & footwear.
Although just over one-third of UK online shoppers have purchased food & grocery online in the past 12 months, compared to almost two thirds that have bought clothing & footwear online, GlobalData believes food spend is set to rise sharply as shoppers continue to seek convenience, become more comfortable buying a wider range of items and grocers improve fulfilment times.
Clothing & footwear is set to remain the largest product sector. Sofie Willmott, Lead Retail Analyst at GlobalData, commented: “Clothing specialists continue to develop their online proposition with many players now offering easy to use credit options like Clearpay and Klarna’s buy now, pay later, driving online conversion and giving shoppers another reason to choose the online channel over stores.”
She concluded: “As growth in physical store sales continues to elude many retailers, particularly in non-food product sectors, investment should be focused online to ensure websites and fulfilment options are constantly improved, in order to remain competitive.”
