The tweet on the high street

As some of our sassier retailers move into social networking, we listen in to the tweet on the high street.

"People have been talking about the way the internet would revolutionise shopping for a while, but arguably it’s only now that we’re seeing what that really means."

In the last few issues of What’s in Store? we’ve looked in some detail at how consumer behaviour has been changing as a result of the recession, and whether this is likely to last into the recovery. As time’s gone on, it’s become clear that there are some important areas where temporary shifts could well turn into a permanent transformation, and one of the most obvious of these is the increasing importance of online shopping. The UK has the largest e-commerce market in Europe, largely thanks to the widespread availability of broadband and its fast delivery times. Sales are projected to hit £30bn in 2013, and though this may still represent only around 10% of the total UK market, the key point is that e-commerce is expected to account for over 55% of retail sales growth over the next five years. Small wonder that many traditional operators are looking to the web to deliver the sales they’re struggling to achieve on the High Street. But to do that effectively, they need to get as savvy as their customers about the dynamics of online browsing and multichannel shopping.

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