Bricks-and-mortar retail stores are struggling to keep up as footfall falls while online retail grows, according to a new report by ‘the voice of e-retail’, IMRG.
The report, entitled ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ which used index data from various sources including ONS, IMRG and BRC, discovered that town and city centre footfall fell by 26% between 2007 and 2013 while all real non-food retail growth since 2001 took place online.
It is estimated that 25,000 high street stores have closed between 2000 and 2011, while Amazon powers ahead based on its strategy of focusing on ‘selection, price and convenience’.
21% of all UK retail is now being conducted online, however many retailers are seeing over half of these orders collected in their shops – and customers shopping for additional unplanned items while they are in the store.
In Q1 2014, over 27% of online sales took place on a tablet, marking yet another overnight revolution in the way consumers like to shop.
Chris Jones, the report’s author, said: “The relationship between e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores is all too often painted as a kind of zero-sum game.
“However today’s consumers want online and offline channels to collaborate, not compete, to deliver the ‘always open, always available, always informed’ shopping experience they expect.
“What’s particularly challenging for retailers trying to meet this need is the ever-increasing pace at which best-practice has to be re-invented to adjust to this new consumer expectation.”
