UK based retail marketing agency Savvy has released research that suggests that more than half of items costing £20 or more are now being bought online. The survey suggested that 39% of goods of over £20 in value are now bought from high street shops, with click and collect 8%.

This explains in a large part why high streets are seeing major declines in footfall and many shops are going out of business. The Savvy survey suggested that people still like to visit high street shops to see the goods they are buying, but are increasingly visiting the larger shops that have an online presence while the smaller ones lose business.

Media rich websites and social media has become the major means of reaching out to customers and making the sale, supplanting the in stores sales team. The survey suggested that the new ‘retail theatres’ are very costly to run by comparison to online portals that need fewer staff and get greater click through than the shops get footfall.

The survey concluded that while smaller towns suffer from the growth of online retailing, major centres such as London, Birmingham and Manchester are seeing greater investment from retailers, as people are willing to make the journey to a larger town for their big purchases. With a greater selection of businesses in their retail centres, the big cities have better competition.

The research suggests that younger people are more likely to buy online too, with 90% of the age group 18-34 having bought online in the last month and 93% possessing a smartphone. These account for 31% of the retail market. As such the trends are toward greater centralisation of retail centres and more goods being bought online.