Online retailing seemed dead and buried at the end of the 1990s, amid the misery of the dotcom crash.
Even so, for every high-profile casualty such as boo.com, there is a thriving, highly profitable amazon.com.
Home shopping retailers must admit that the days of the big book are over and that the great hope of the home shopping industry is, or should be, the internet
Richard Perks, Mintel director
Banks and commercial landlords are no longer wary of this sector, and neither, it seems, are consumers: UK shoppers spent £46.6bn online in 2007, an increase of 54% on the year before, and the market is likely to grow for a while yet.
“The growth in online retail is due in part to increasing consumer confidence and familiarity with the web,” says Victoria Bracewell Lewis, an analyst at market research company Forrester. PayPal and WorldPay, widely used and trusted systems of payment, have helped allay consumer concerns.
With consumers no longer wary of buying on the web, catalogue shopping looks increasingly obsolete. “Home shopping retailers must admit that the days of the big book are over and that the great hope of the home shopping industry is, or should be, the internet,” says Richard Perks, director of retail research at Mintel.
Convenience
“The internet is still seen by many as an exciting, new and convenient way to shop from home, while catalogues are seen as old fashioned and downmarket.”
As well as security, access to the medium and the attendant technologies has improved dramatically: whereas at the turn of the century only a quarter of people in the UK had internet access at home and dial-up modems predominated, 67% of households now have access to the internet, 85% of which have broadband access. With online shopping now an effective alternative, fewer people are willing to spend their valuable leisure time travelling to shopping centres on increasingly congested roads.
Just as shopping online is easier, so too is running a business online. You don’t need an office or a shop, just some high-quality hardware, a broadband connection, several phone lines, a degree of business acumen and some IT skills.
You don’t even need to get involved in the day-to-day shipping, as you can pay third parties to handle such operations. An internet business is also more scalable, as you don’t need to find bigger or extra premises or hire more shop assistants when sales grow.
Because overheads are lower, you can pass savings on to customers, giving them yet another reason to shop online. It is still possible for smaller, more targeted operations to be run part-time, at least in their early stages, allowing the entrepreneur to keep his or her day job before abandoning secure income for the risks of the marketplace.
You can buy almost anything on the internet these days — even your groceries. Books and DVDs are particularly popular, as are clothes, even though consumers cannot try before they buy.
The market for goods whose ‘look and feel’ is irrelevant, such as event tickets and holidays, is enormous and growing. There are few advantages to buying such goods from the high street or even over the phone.
