Online shopping in Britain continues - weather or not!

Internet sales in Britain continue to rise despite Christmas presents delayed and undelivered due to severe winter weather conditions.

Leading Bournemouth University retail academic, Jeff Bray, predicts that retailers hoping to attract frustrated Christmas shoppers, dependent on slow mail order deliveries due to the weather, back into the high streets to do some last minute shopping will be left disappointed.

Bray, Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Retail Management in the University's School of Tourism, says that despite the disruption to deliveries, consumers would rather continue to shop indoors at home rather than venture out in the snow. The effects of Arctic weather in Britain has delayed the delivery of thousands of Christmas parcels across the country and forced a number of online retailers to announce that new orders placed via the internet may not arrive in time for the big day.

“We have seen internet shopping rise in total sales proportion dramatically this year from 7.9% at the same point in 2009 to 10.6% in 2010, so clearly internet shopping is growing,” said Bray.

“The bad weather is a key reason for the growth in internet shopping but the delays and failed deliveries have a negligible impact in comparison to this uplift, though it will undoubtedly deter some and grab lots of the headlines,” he continued.