UK Retail Growth into the digital sphere
By the Data and Insights Dept.
As the Retail Sector steadily climbs to its feet in the after effects of the pandemic, we’ve seen how the UK’s retail sector is championing digital infrastructure as retail continues to grow.
Firstly, let’s take a look at where the physical retail sector stands: Retail data analysts Springboard, found that during 2021 there remained a significant gap in footfall from 2019, however activity has strengthened from 2020 by +54.1% in high streets, +53% in shopping centres and by +28.7% in retail parks. They noted that there were higher sales than in 2019, or sales that at least stayed largely on a level with 2019.
Whilst this was happening, the App Annie Report ( also known as data.ai) found that in 2021 time spent in Shopping Apps reached over 100 Billion Hours globally; rising 18% year-over-year, with strong movement in fast fashion, social shopping, and mobile-savvy big-box players. Among the countries with the fastest growth were Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil at 52%, 46% and 45%.
However, as detailed before, whilst there were fast growers, the UK was spearheading Europe in terms of being digital first. The growth wasn’t as dramatic as other countries, but there was steady increase- and steadiness is a good sign that something is being done consistently, and working.
The report also found that retail brands across the globe are losing share to non-local companies, most notably in regions across AMER- as shoppers turn to overseas headquartered Shopping apps. For example, US-based apps lost 5% share of downloads to overseas publishers, which were driven by China, Canada, Australia, and Japan. And in Brazil, overseas headquartered apps dominated 52% of all shopping app downloads in 2021.
However, if we look at the UK, we saw that the highest retail app downloads were:
- Iceland Bonus card- a supermarket
- Etsy- handmade e-commerce
- Screw Fix App- hardware
- Morrisons match and more- supermarket
- Lyst- fashion
- Airycloth- fashion
All of these apps but Etsy are headquartered in the UK, which proves that all kinds of retail in the UK are integrating digital.
Further proving this is Vijay Ram, Head of Technology at ASOS. He says: “At ASOS, our vision is to be the go-to global destination for fashion loving 20-somethings -the place that our target consumers turn to for fashion. Our apps are critical in helping us realise that vision - enabling us to create a place that's inspiring, engaging and entertaining - with the technical agility, global scale, and resilience to continuously innovate and personalise our offering to become the fashion best friend of each of our customers.”
And it seems that ASOS isn’t the only UK based retail brand taking this stance. EcommerceDB, a sister system of Statista- that delivers detailed info for 20,000 stores in 50 countries- recently found that the retail and ecommerce start up growth is on the up; with the UK being the most active in December 2021.
