What you need to know
The online retail market in the UK grew by 14.4% in 2018 to reach £68.5 billion. This represents a slight slowdown on the 16.4% growth seen in 2017 but comfortably above the 4.0% growth seen in the wider sector meaning online grew its share of all retail sales to 18.0% in 2018, up from 11.4% in 2014. We forecast strong growth within the sector through to 2024 at which point online may account for as much as 27.7% of all retail sales.
The vast majority of UK shoppers do some online shopping, with 95% in our sample doing so in the year to May 2019. Younger consumers are the most engaged and frequent shoppers online, with 51% of 16-34s saying they shop online weekly. Notably in our data for the first time, this group was more likely to shop via smartphone (71%) than a laptop/desktop (63%) meaning retailers now have to deal with the first mobile-first generation.
Amazon is the dominant player online, a retailer that 94% of online shoppers used in the past year and one that accounted for just under a quarter (23%) of all retail sales in 2018. However, while Amazon has driven many of the changes and innovations in the market, store-based players are equally benefitting from online. Indeed, store-based retailers accounted for 49.6% of all retail sales, and apart from Amazon and eBay, the rest of the 10 most popular retailers to shop with online in the UK are all retailers who also operate stores.
Areas covered in this Report
This Report is designed to give an overview of the UK online retail market. We look at all online sales, both from store-based retailers and those that only trade online. We include an overview of the market, including forecasts for the way the market will develop, in-depth consumer analysis using our own data, and a look at the key players in the market through company profiles.
For our consumer research this year we asked questions on the following topics:
Who is shopping online and which consumers shop most frequently online?
What products do they buy online?
Which devices are they making purchases on and how do they prefer to shop via mobile?
What do consumers do before making a purchase online?
What retailers do they shop with online?
Are they a member of a subscription delivery service, and if so which ones?
How many consumers shopped via credit in the past year, and which type of service did they use?
How widespread is the use of cashback sites, and which do they use?
What are consumers attitudes to returns, try-before-you-buy and the discovery process?
