American Express

However, according to an analysis from American Express Business Insights, the beginning of 2011 has proved a challenging environment for retailers.

Despite a difficult first quarter, there are reasons to be positive about the health of UK retail. While some retail categories continue to struggle, others, such as supermarkets, have held up well and continue to be strong contributors to growth.

Internet spending has significantly outpaced the growth of in-store spending. It accelerated during the downturn and continues to grow rapidly - even in the first quarter of 2011, in contrast to in-store spend.

Our analysis showed that women in the UK are increasing their internet retail spending more quickly than men, with the number of female internet shoppers increasing by 23% from 2007 to 2010. Male internet shoppers increased by 16% during the same time period.

Online shoppers in the UK are also becoming more engaged and broadening their online spending. The number of online customers shopping in multiple categories such as department stores, jewellery and supermarkets, doubled from 2007 to 2010. We’ve seen that those who shop online across multiple categories shop three times more than single category shoppers. Interestingly, these consumers also shop twice as much offline. They are an engaged segment of shoppers and clearly attractive target customers to both online and offline retailers.

This analysis has been compiled by American Express Business Insights: the data analytics and consulting arm of American Express. We leverage our unique data to provide clients with invaluable insights into their customers, competitive position and marketplace.

Our insights are based on actual, aggregated spending data, reflecting millions of purchasing decisions rather than surveys of purchasing intentions. Our data reflects spending across approximately 90 million cards in close to 130 countries and more than 5 billion annual transactions. All of our analysis is carried out on an aggregate level, and we never disclose any personally identifiable information about cardmembers or merchants.

Sujata Bhatia, Vice President, American Express Business Insights Europe & Asia