BRC figures show a significant improvement on last year's sales.

Consumers are increasingly embracing online retail, according to new figures, which show sales via the internet during October were almost a fifth higher than at the same time last year.

According to statistics from the British Retail Consortium's (BRC), online sales rose by 18 per cent year-on-year and jumped by 11.9 per cent compared with the previous month.

The figures come despite the fact there were a series of regional and national postal strikes over the last two months, suggesting consumers may have used Royal Mail alternatives such as Parcel2Go.com.

Krishan Rama, a spokesman for the BRC, told ITPro that online retail should continue to perform well in the run-up to Christmas.

"Now there's a guarantee that there's no postal strike until at least the end of the year, this should really boost sales … If you look at last year there was a 30 per cent boost in sales for December year-on-year. Things are looking fairly positive," he said.

The figures come despite a recent survey of online retailers by the Interactive Media in Retail Group which found that 85 per cent of firms thought the postal strikes would dissuade people from shopping on the internet.

Written by Tom Sands



Article Added: 11/11/2009 09:02:59