THE ROLE OF THE HIGH STREET IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Today, over three quarters of consumers use the internet to shop, with 22.4% of non-food purchases made online. Online shopping is also beginning to dominate key dates in the retail calendar which previously saw high streets bustling. For example, 71% shoppers carried out over half of their Christmas shopping online in 2014, compared to just 28% in 2013. In this same period, some of the UK’s best-known high street brands – such as HMV, Woolworths and Comet – have all but disappeared. In fact, 12% of the UK’s shops now lie empty, with over 10,000 closures estimated in 2015. In what has often been pitched as a battle between online and high street retail, eCommerce appears to be gaining ground. However, as revealed at The Guardian’s recent Changing Media Summit, several of today’s retailers no longer consider the two in “binary terms”. Instead, they are exploring the links between them.
The Impact
of Mobile
In the past, discussions around internet shopping have conjured images of empty high streets, where shoppers browse the internet from the comfort of their own homes. However, with the rise of the smart phone – which has enabled people to access the internet and make purchases on-the-go – the division between these worlds has become blurred. For example, 76% of consumers admit to ‘showrooming’; a term coined by retailers to describe the activity of using a smart phone whilst in a store to compare prices online. Conversely, reverse-showrooming describes the act of checking prices online before going to a particular store to make the final purchase. To confuse matters further, a single transaction can span both worlds – as many retailers now allow online purchases to be collected in store.