Research Report: Online Shopping Trends and UK Retail Analysis

This report examines the evolving landscape of the UK retail sector, focusing on the growth of online shopping and its impact on traditional high street businesses. It analyzes the increasing dominance of e-commerce, driven by factors like customer preferences for flexibility and product variety, as well as the influence of major players like Google and Amazon. The report also discusses the challenges faced by physical stores due to tax policies and the strategies adopted by companies like John Lewis to integrate online and physical retail. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of government reforms in tax policies to ensure the balanced growth of both online and physical businesses. The analysis is based on a review of articles discussing digital growth, store closures, and innovative approaches to online shopping, providing insights into the future of the UK retail market. Finally, the report concludes with the importance of tax reforms for a fair and balanced market.

Researching and Analysing
Data

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:.........................................................................................................................1
Main body:.......................................................................................................................................1
Online shopping and high street trends.......................................................................................1
Article 1 City must wake up to digital growth............................................................................1
Article 2 Store closure over online firm's advantage..................................................................1
Article 3 John lewis to extend online shopping empire via thousands of corner stores.............2
CONCLUSION:...............................................................................................................................2
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION:
Internet is becoming a place for doing business. It is providing a platform for every company to
earn huge profits. . It usually means e retail where one business to buy or sell products to other
business in a B2B process. Whereas high street means physically buying of product in outlets or
stores of company. In this assignment research is done on growth of online shopping and its
contribution in UK's GDP (Mason, 2017). Also, how in recent times retail business is affected by
tax reforms is discussed.
Main body:
Online shopping and high street trends
There is a huge gap between online shopping and high street. Many high street companies are
now focused on increasing their business through internet. Customers are more attracted to shop
online due to its flexibility and more variety of products available. Moreover, customer spending
is increased in online shopping that has resulted growth of e- commerce. But majority of factors
that affects people from shopping is physical touch of products and quality. This is affecting
growth of online business in UK (Lyons, and Coyle, eds., 2016)
Article 1 City must wake up to digital growth
It is said that digital business is the third largest contribution in world's GDP. It is because of
MNC's like google and amazon have focused their business towards digitalising the UK's
economy. They have gained market share in retail, travel and many other sector. Klein's index
ventures has raised 1 billion euros within two years in start ups. They are having 130 – 140
investments in retail as well as financial sector. It has provided farmers a platform to get insured
their crop from bad weather. It is assumed that digital business will grow 12.4% till 2016. it is
said by klein that how Kodak was destroyed by internet so investors from doc tom boom that
occurred in 2003 that cost them billions. In a report it was found that among 20 companies only
2-3 were involved in doing business via digitally. Even though the government is supporting
FDI to transform UK's economy (Maylor,, Blackmon, and Huemann, 2016). This is only
possible when every business measures their digital operations. CFO and CEO are responsible

for developing strategies to evaluate business operations. UK is far behind than silicon valley
due to banks that didn't employ analysts for this sector (Riazi,, 2017). Asos is the example of it
which is following fashion analysts rather than digital one. Banks are having 700 billion to invest
in digital technology. Further, with the help of media there is a frequent change in retail sector
that has created some successful companies like Zara, H&M, etc.
Article 2 Store closure over online firm's advantage
UK government failed to reform tax policies between retail and online sector. This lead to
closure of many big stores as they were in huge lose. Business rates was the major factor that
was affecting the profits of stores. This increases tax of 120 million euros each year. So in order
to reduce tax companies have to close their store. On the other hand online retailers lower their
cost to take advantage of it. The historical model of tax must be modified to enhance the growth
of stores. Tax rate has been risen 5% last year and is set to rise by 2.6% more this year. This has
lead to recession in which HMV have suffered a lot. It happened due to some large online
companies like amazon used Luxembourg subsidiary by avoiding them to pay tax in UK
(Copland, and Creese., 2015). Moreover, in 2011 Google only paid 3.4 million euro tax by
having sales of 2.5 billion euro. Kingfisher is Europe's largest home improvement retailer with
over 1000 stores in 8 countries. It is having 80,000 employees and its sales was 10.8 billion euros
with pre tax profit of 804 million euros. It is also having online presence with Screwfix that deals
in products such as paints, gardening products, etc. and it is attracting more customers than
physical stores.
Article 3 John lewis to extend online shopping empire via thousands of corner stores
John lewis operating in online business is now to expand its growth by opening thousands of
retails stores. These stores will work on the method based on collect+ scheme that allows
customers to return internet bought product. Almost 5000 stores will be opened throughout
Europe. In Scotland, Ireland and south England 1000 outlets will be set up for customers to
return item at a nominal of charge of 3 euros. It will give their customers a first physical
presence of John lewis (Ward, and Rhodes,., 2014). This idea was brought up by the head mark
lewis. He helped business with the help of payment service pay point and distribution company
yodel. It gave competition in the market where companies like Amazon, Asos and Fraser were

already existing. It was done to deliver goods customers place that made online shopping easier.
It helped John lewis as it sales grown up to 35% online sales. They tied up with waitrose last
summer that allowed shoppers to pick up goods from super market. Therefore, it is encouraging
existing customer to shop more frequently and also attracting new ones (Leow., Mues, and
Thomas,, 2014). This was the reason that in festive season of Christmas its online sales rose up
to 44% .
CONCLUSION:
From this assignment it is concluded that online shopping and high street are continuously
growing in UK's economy. It showed that how google and amazon covered the various sector
and it encouraged starts ups to make innovation in business. Further, government must reform
tax policy to ensure proper growth and development of both physical and online business.
Effective tax policy will help in increasing revenue and focusing on each area of retail sector. At
last how a medium enterprise sales was increased due to opening physical stores and delivering
products at customers place.

REFERENCES:
Copland, F. and Creese, A., 2015. Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting
data. Sage.
Leow, M., Mues, C. and Thomas, L., 2014. The economy and loss given default: evidence from
two UK retail lending data sets. Journal of the Operational Research Society.65(3). pp.363-
375.
Lyons, E. and Coyle, A. eds., 2016. Analysing qualitative data in psychology. Sage.
Macht, S.A. and Weatherston, J., 2014. The benefits of online crowdfunding for fund‐seeking
business ventures. Strategic Change 23(1‐2). pp.1-14.
Mason, J., 2017. Qualitative researching. Sage.
Maylor, H., Blackmon, K. and Huemann, M., 2016. Researching business and management.
Palgrave.
Riazi, A.M., 2017. Mixed methods research in language teaching and learning. London,
England: Equinox.
Ward, M. and Rhodes, C., 2014. Small businesses and the UK economy. Standard Note:
SN/EP/6078. Office for National Statistics.