Article

Online shopping? We’re in love, actually

23 December 2021
Katie Williams
Katie Williams
Editorial & Investment Content
Online shopping? We’re in love, actually
Tokyo, Japan

Love Actually holds a dear place in the nation’s heart for many reasons.

Hugh Grant dancing down No. 10 Downing Street’s staircase to the Pointer Sisters classic, ‘Jump’, probably has something to do with it.

But the film also teaches us some important life lessons:

  1. Christmas songs are almost always terrible. Which is probably half their charm.
  2. All you have to do to get the girl is run through an airport.
  3. The fastest way to lose your temper is to enter a busy department store at Christmas time. And if they ask whether you want it gift wrapped, for all our sakes, just say ‘no’.

With this last point, I segue into today’s chart, and talk a little about the continued popularity of online shopping.

Not just a holiday romance

For a long time now, the internet has allowed shoppers to swerve queues and crowds. From the comfort of our own homes, we can access almost all major retailers.

And the comfort-factor isn’t the only reason online shopping has become so popular. The choice is unparalleled too.

With a couple of clicks, we can browse a range of gifts so extensive that even Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nicks combined could not dream it up.

So it’s no shocker that online sales have grown significantly over the past two decades.

In November 2006, they made up 2.8% of total retail sales. Today this figure has reached 26.3%, according to the latest ONS data.1

It seems likely that a world of new normals could accelerate this trend further.

For obvious reasons, last year’s Christmas shopping season saw a significant shift to online sales.

Similarly, this year’s pre-Christmas surveys suggest eCommerce will be a big winner once again, with Millennials and Londoners leading the charge in the UK.

Figure 1. Proportion of shopping spend by channel
Figure 1. Proportion of shopping spend by channel

Source: PwC pre-Christmas survey, October 2021.

Count down to Christmas with our festive charts as we publish a new piece each day. Recognise the images that feature on our calendar windows? Each corresponds to a city where an Invesco office is based.

Read about structural trends Return to calendar homepage

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