6 out of 10 Brits no longer prepared to stand in queues for shopping
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 at 3:40 pmLondon, Jan 31 (ANI): 59 per cent of people in Britain would go elsewhere or shop online, if faced with queues at a store.
According to the survey conducted by YouGov, of the 59 per cent more than half would shop online rather than queue. Almost nine out of ten said insufficient staff numbers cause long queues, while 23 per cent said slow payment methods were the cause.
A separate survey revealed the over 55s now make up the UK’s biggest group of online shoppers, with 86 per cent shopping regularly online. More than a third in the age group now say that they do their majority of shopping online, rather than on the high street, and 6 per cent expect to do all their shopping online in the future.
The survey also suggested that Britons spend double the time browsing shops online than they do on the high street. On average, people in the UK spend over 2.4 hours a week shopping online, although average spend on the web is consistently lower.
"The problem for traditional bricks and mortar retailers is that these same people will then go online and once there they prefer online specialists like Amazon," the Telegraph quoted Rob Cushen, Retail Consulting Director at YouGov, as saying.
"This is a huge lost opportunity for the high street. The solution is not to increase the number of staff to handle queues at peak times but the smart use of technology," Cushen said. (ANI)
