6TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL REPORT IMRG INDEX
During the past six months, IMRG has undertaken a major study of the way the internet is affecting
consumer spending. To augment its IMRG Index data, which collects hard sales data each month
from a large pool of e-retailers whose sales represent a quarter of the UK market by value, IMRG
consulted widely with leading Government and commercial agencies, and commissioned
eDigitalResearch to conduct a series of surveys, including a consumer survey that collected 3,900
responses. The key findings are as follows.
§ £80 billion of consumer spending is either ON OR INFLUENCED BY the internet, of which:
§ £30 billion of RETAIL SPENDING* is online – a quarter of this is travel
§ £20 billion of OTHER CONSUMER SPENDING ** is online (Note: this value is difficult to
quantify, and is believed to be a minimum)
§ a further £30 billion of OFFLINE RETAIL sales is impacted by internet information, research or
stimuli
§ 10% of retail sales now take place online
§ e-retail sales have grown at an average year-on-year rate of 45% for the past 6 months
§ e-retail sales have grown 2,000% in 6 years
§ 44% of shoppers polled expect their online shopping to increase in the next 12 months
§ 90% had researched goods online then bought them offline
§ 73% assume that an item available on a retailer’s website will also be in their stores
§ 47% assume that if goods are not available in a retailer’s online store they won’t be in their
physical store either
§ 52% of consumers plan to reduce their high street spending in 2006
