Retailing In The Internet Age

In the last two decades the World Wide Web and technologies associated with it have transformed the way we shop and do business.

Internet use has grown rapidly since the mid-1990s. Last year 38% of the world's population was online at some point in the year — a hundred-fold increase in usage in 20 years.

In the UK almost 90% of the population has access to the internet, up from under 2.0% in 1995. Three quarters of British households use the internet every day.

This growth has been facilitated by the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which are becoming the primary devices for accessing the internet. The share of the population accessing the Internet through a mobile phone has more than doubled since 2010, to 58%.