RetailX: UK e-commerce report to 2023

The 2023 edition of the RetailX UK eCommerce Report brings together the latest findings on how UK consumers shop online and across sales channels, and how the market’s leading retailers and brands are selling their products.

Most UK consumers shop online, although spending has fallen since peaking during the coronavirus lockdown.

According to the latest data from the International Telecommunication Union (2021), 96.7% of the UK population uses the internet. This figure has risen steadily since 2018, when 90.7% were online, with the largest increase in 2020 (+2.3 percentage points to 94.8%).

Statistics show that 81.5% of British Internet users shop online. This is an increase of 7.5 percentage points from 74% in 2018, with the largest year-on-year increases in 2019 (+2.9 percentage points to 76.9%) and 2020 (+2.3 percentage points to 79.2%). The UK's online shopping penetration rate is higher than the European average (64.1%) and the global average (49.2%).

Recent data from IMRG, the UK electronics retail trade association, shows that UK e-commerce sales have fallen for two consecutive years since stores reopened after the last lockdown in 2020. E-commerce spending has since continued to decline from its peak during the pandemic. However, according to Statista, spending remains above pre-pandemic levels in 2018 and 2019. Global and European average spending has grown faster between 2018 and 2022, albeit from a lower starting point. The European average has also fallen in 2022 compared to 2021.

According to Statista, the peak of online spending in 2020 was particularly prominent in the beauty, health and personal care (+20.5%), electronics (+17.3%) and "other" categories (+38.5%). Since then, spending growth has slowed or declined.