Internet Changes Everything

Online spending more than doubles

Online spending more than doubles

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons have more than doubled the amount of money they spend online over the past year as ever more people do routine tasks like grocery shopping and paying bills over the Internet.

Credit card provider Visa said in a study released on Friday that its UK cardholders spent over 2.4 billion pounds on the Internet in the first quarter of 2004, up 123 percent from the same period last year.

One of the biggest winners was the food and drink industry, where sales more than trebled because of a "massive rise" in people doing their supermarket shopping online, Visa said. Sales of books and music also surged, up 116 percent in the quarter.

Holidays were a popular item to book online, with travel and tourism sales up 159 percent over the same period.

The increasing trend towards shopping on the Web was reflected earlier this month in results from Internet retailer Lastminute.com, which said its total transactions soared 94 percent in the same three months.

A key survey of consumer confidence on Thursday also held steady in May, suggesting shoppers had not been deterred by the Bank of England's recent interest rate rises.

May 31, 2004 at 11:02 AM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (68) | Top of page | Blog Home