The UK home shopping market was worth £10.5 billion excluding sales tax in 2003, making it Europe’s second-largest home shopping market after Germany.

Online sales are driving ahead strongly, but the appalling performance of the big agency-based mail order houses is holding back progress in the home shopping market as a whole. Yet the lines are becoming increasingly blurred between e-commerce and other forms of home shopping.

Online retail business presently comes from three main sources – pure Internet specialists, catalogue operators, and store retailers. With the exception of Amazon and a handful of others, the pure players segment is, and will remain comparatively small and highly fragmented for the foreseeable future.

About the market…

The UK home shopping market was worth £10.5 billion excluding sales tax in 2003, making it Europe’s second-largest home shopping market after Germany.

Online sales are driving ahead strongly, but the appalling performance of the big agency-based mail order houses is holding back progress in the home shopping market as a whole. Yet the lines are becoming increasingly blurred between e-commerce and other forms of home shopping.

Online retail business presently comes from three main sources – pure Internet specialists, catalogue operators, and store retailers. With the exception of Amazon and a handful of others, the pure players segment is, and will remain comparatively small and highly fragmented for the foreseeable future.

About Mintel’s research…

Mintel’s report fuses together the latest analysis of market trends and retailers’ performance with seriously innovative consumer research. The results offer you all the insight and inspiration you need for designing clever, targeted and profitable business strategies in this retail sector.

Use Mintel’s research to:

Develop the next big idea in your market

Discover what consumers think about your business

Benchmark key UK consumer trends against general European dynamics

Assess attitudes to home shopping and discover what would encourage consumer to shop from home

Find out how to best reach key audiences

Pin point market potential

Learn about major retailer’s operating strengths and weaknesses, their threats and opportunities

Measure market forecasts