Report on online spending per person shows shoppers in the UK as world leaders

A recent report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which was commissioned by search giant Google and was widely reported by a number of news sources over the last week has shown that online shopping in the UK accounts for a significant proportion of online spending worldwide.

The overall value of the internet to the UK back in 2009 was found to be around £100 billion ($139 billion), which was around 7.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and was very close to the 9 percent that the financial industry contributed, according to the report from BCG.

In the report BCG calculated that online internet shopping by consumers in the UK accounted for £50 billion ($69) over 2009. Even with one partner at BCG advising that the £100 billion figure being “a very conservative estimate” it still shows that consumers in the UK play a huge role in the country’s GDP.

An estimate from eMarketer calculated that in 2010 more than two thirds of consumers in the UK aged 14 or above, which equated to 25 million people, bought either services, goods or travel online at least once every month. This confirms that no other country has taken to ecommerce like the UK and in certain ecommerce activities even the US can’t compete.

The average online spend for consumers in the UK was found to be higher than anywhere else globally with a figure of around £1600 ($2224) and this amount was calculated by BCG based on a number of sources placing the number of consumers shopping online in 2010 at 31 million. In the report BCG found that saving money was the biggest factor for users shopping online with the average home that shopped online in 2009 saving about £1000 ($1390).

Source – E Marketer