The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has released new figures showing a boost in online sales over the month of January, as people ordering goods for courier services helped drive overall retail sales and encourage home sales to take over a greater share of the market.
It found that non-store retailing, which is primarily made up of online sales and includes telesales and postal orders, grew by 13.3 per cent last month on a year-on-year basis.
This brought the total number of sales up to £640.4 million weekly, meaning they account for 11.9 per cent of total sales, excluding fuel. Last year non-store retailing only accounted for 8.9 per cent of retail sales.
Kentaro Hyakuno, chief executive of Rakuten's Play.com, told Internet Retailing the new figures showed the depth of the changes occurring throughout the shopping landscape and the switch towards a new paradigm of multichannel retailing.
"Many believe that bricks and mortar will continue to steadily lose ground to their digital competitors in the coming years, but this doesn't have to be the case. Ecommerce can be used to complement and encourage offline sales as well as loyalty," said Mr Hyakuno.
This model would involve a more integrated, holistic approach from companies, leading to a "connected retail environment".
He added that what is important for retailers is that they combine the convenience and flexibility of ecommerce with the "customer service and tangibility" of offline shopping, ultimately offering customers the best of both worlds as the boundary between the two mediums becomes less defined.
A telling example of this increasing convergence was provided recently when iconic confectioner Thorntons, which celebrated its hundredth birthday last year, announced plans to scale back its bricks-and-mortar presence and concentrate on online sales.
Despite this, it intends to leave a number of high street stores open as so-called ambassadors for the brand, raising awareness of the operation and providing personalised customer service for shoppers.
The figures from the ONS and Mr Hyakuno's predictions may point towards models like this becoming more popular in the future.
Author: Paul Burn
