Category: Retail
Is 2019 the year ‘Black Friday’ stops being on Black Friday?
Andy Mulcahy, Strategy and Insight Director, IMRG explains why Black Friday promotions actually start well in advance of the day (and probably go on well into the weekend too)... With Black Friday officially occurring today (the UK market has stuck with the US date for the retail event, falling the day after Thanksgiving, which is…
More UK retailers to accept Alipay following Barclaycard partnership
Chinese mobile payments giant Alipay can now be used in more UK stores after a partnership with Barclaycard was announced. AliPay is currently accepted in some UK shops, restaurants and hotels but Barclaycard says it will now offer software that will enable retailers to update their existing point-of-sale systems to support Alipay – rather than…
Shopping via smartphones and tablets to rise by £10bn, uSwitch survey suggests
Shopping via smartphones and tablets is set to rise by £10 billion since last year as consumers make more visits to online sites than malls for the first time, a survey from uSwitch suggests. Some 30 million Britons (58%) will use smart devices to shop this year, an increase of 12 million on last year,…
Death of the desktop? Tech-savvy Brits shun desktop PCs and DVD players for smart devices
British shoppers are turning away from desktop PCs British shoppers are shunning desktop PCs and DVD players in favour of smart televisions and smart watches, according to figures from regulator Ofcom. Less than a third of homes now have a desktop PC, with consumers increasingly turning to smart technology, according…
Nine in 10 Black Friday ‘deals’ cheaper other times of year, Which? reveals
(Yui Mok/PA) A Which? investigation reveals that nearly nine in 10 of last year’s Black Friday ‘deals’ were cheaper or the same price at other times of the year, as it warns shoppers to do their research before hitting the sales. Which? tracked the prices of 94 popular products, including TVs,…
One in five Brits now never carries cash around, survey reveals
Researchers who polled 2,000 UK adults found many are now opting to pay using different methods such as contactless card and smartphone payments such as ApplePay. Half believe cash is 'on the way out' and will ‘soon’ be superseded by alternative ways of paying for goods and services. Three quarters revealed they now expect ALL retailers…
Black Friday set to be worth £10.4bn in the UK in 2018, says GlobalData
Black Friday sales are forecast to grow faster than the UK retail market in Q4 2018, as the promotional period draws in spend from before and after the event. Says Zoe Mills, Retail Analyst at GlobalData: “Spend during the Black Friday period accounted for 10.5% of Q4 spend. Growth will continue to slow year-on-year given the…
Alibaba’s $30 billion Singles Day helps power UK brands including Dyson, Jaguar Land Rover
Forget Black Friday. Alibaba's Singles’ Day is the biggest online sales day and this year it helped power UK brands as sales topped $30 billion. The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales soared to £23.81 billion ($30bn) last Sunday (November 11th). And the international delivery company ParcelHero says the strong demand for quality products means…
Online sales via mobile devices slow as smartphone growth falters
Online retail sales increase of 12.8% year-on-year (YoY) in August Month-on-Month (MoM) decrease of 1.7% from July, notably lower than last year’s drop of 4.8% M-retail growth (mobile retail) was at an all-time low of just 10% YoY Online only retailers outperformed multichannel retailers (14.0% vs. 10.8% YoY) Overall market conversion rate is 4.7%, compared…
Online retail sales still up but growth slowing according to IMRG Capgemini
Online retail sales were up 12.1% on average year-on-year (YoY) in 2017, according to the latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. Compared to 2016’s YoY average of 15.9%, the fall in annual growth is one of multiple indicators of a maturing market. Indeed, across the twelve months of 2017 only March and April showed…