Online shift away from high street to accelerate at Christmas

Already struggling non-food high street retailers could lose their festive period boost as consumers prefer to go online to purchase presents.

According to research from Mintel, food retailers and online shopping are set to be the winners this Christmas as consumers tighten spending and prefer to do so from the comfort of their homes. Online sales will rise over 14% to £5.6bn, or nearly 12% of all retail spending.

Total retail spending is expected to rise 4% in December, compared with the same month in 2017, to reach around £48bn excluding VAT. Food sales are predicted to rise by 3.3% to £18.6bn, Mintel predicted.

Despite the increase, these figures could be further bad news for non-food retail high street stores which are already under pressure as a result of weak consumer confidence and rise in ecommerce popularity.

Companies such as Marks & Spencer, New Look, Debenhams and House of Fraser are all closing stores according to data from Springboard and Toys R Us and Maplin already went into administration earlier on this year as a result of the conditions in the retail business.

Richard Perks, the director of retail research at Mintel, said high-street operators should feel content that sales are still growing: “While there’s been much talk of how the high street is being undermined by online retailing, it still only represents a relatively small part of overall retail sales, with most shopping still taking place in physical stores.”

“Many of the clothing retailers have performed badly in the face of competition from online players. While plenty of clothing retailers have performed well (TK Maxx and a raft of smaller ones including Superdry and Seasalt), too many have gone risk averse, rather than realising that, to succeed in the current market, they cannot afford to play it safe,” Perks added.