British hunger for online shopping continues

The British publics passion for shopping online is growing, and wont stop. At the start of 2004, we spent twice as much as we did this time last year, according to the latest figures from Visa EU.A pattern is emerging in the UK and across Europe: each quarter, year-on-year, online spend is approximately doubling. Total UK sales figures for the first quarter of 2004 were more than twice that of the same period in 2003 – an increase of 123%. During that time, Visa cardholders in the UK spent over £2.4 billion on the Internet. A big winner has been the retail industry, particularly in the area of food and drink, in which sales have more than trebled. This growth has been helped by a massive rise in people ordering their groceries from supermarkets over the web. The popularity of buying books and music is also still strong, with an increase of 116%. The amount spent on domestic services has grown by more than three times in the last year – the public has in fact spent almost five times as much on insurance, and four times as much on utility bill payments and taxes over the last twelve months. Travel and tourism remains a strong growth area online with annual expenditure up by 159% since Q1 2003. The research comes as Visa prepares for the launch to consumers of an easy password protection system called Verified by Visa – an online authentication system that guarantees cardholder identity when shopping online and is estimated to reduce the number of disputed online transactions by up to 80%. Outside of the UK, all the major European markets experienced healthy e-commerce growth year-on-year. Spain showed the biggest growth (166%), while Italy (144%) and France (140%) have also more than doubled their Internet spend. Germany, already a huge market for shopping online, had 83% growth over the year.