Online shopping figures jumped during the riot in the UK. Shoppers flocked to retailers’ websites to avoid going to the high street, according to some major retailers.
John Lewis and Waitrose claimed that there was a significant rise in online shopping via their websites while the riot took place on the high street. Throughout all online stores there was a 35% year on year surge in revenue same week last year.
Waitrose witnessed a higher online sales lift than John Lewis, bringing in £95.9 million in that week, a boost of whopping 8.4%.
High street shops have been battling to keep its ground in the past several months because of consumers tight budgets and deciding on the less expensive options of heading to to shop online in order to save petrol and journey costs. Also consumers are becoming more savvy and compare prices among retailers online before heading to check out.
Because of the riots, many of the independent retailers are having uncomfortable figures on their balance sheet. Some of them may not be able recover from this.
The statistics released after the riots indicate that big multichannel stores like Waitrose and John Lewis are less likely be affected as much as the small retailers because of their brand identity and promotional activities online as well as offline.
John Lewis representative, Jonathon Brown, revealed to The Sun that the company experienced good sales while the riots took place, although several of its mainstream shops were smashed. Also he added that people usually who would have gone to their high street shops as an alternative stayed at home and used their website to shop online.
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