It may be tough times on the High Street, but online retailers are expecting their most successful Xmas yet.
IMRG and Kelkoo both estimate £13.5bn will be spent in the UK online during the next four weeks, up 14 per cent over 2010. And consumers will be spending earlier than ever in a bid to avoid the snow chaos that disrupted deliveries last year.
IMRG says that £4bn will be spent over the first two weeks of December alone, while Monday, December 5th is tipped to be this year’s ‘Mega Monday’ – the biggest online sales day of the year.
But the growth in online spending is bad news for the High Street. Kelkoo estimates that spending will be 2.1 per cent down at traditional retailers over Christmas.
Online games retailers are preparing deals over the coming weeks to capitalise on the spending boom. Amazon has already kicked off its activity, with a week of temporary deals.
“Consumers seem to respond positively to price-led special promotions that can be found online around this time,” said HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo.“It’s an optimum date when peaks of supply and demand meet, and it just keeps getting bigger as online shopping grows.”
The Hut Group’s head of business development Sarah Jasper added: “We are confident this will be our busiest Christmas to date.”
Asda is preparing itself for its first Xmas with an in-house entertainment site.
“Now we have migrated the entertainment range onto the Asda Direct platform it gives us the opportunity to capitalise on the customer traffic driven through entertainment-led campaigns and new releases across the piste,” said Asda Direct’s trading boss Frazer Locke.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/uk-on...as-boom/087772