Armchair Christmas shoppers spend £5bn

Online retailers enjoyed a bumper Christmas, with sales rising by around 50% on the previous year, research showed today.

Shoppers spent a total of nearly £5 billion on internet goods in the 10 weeks to Christmas as they shunned the high street in favour of ordering from the comfort of their armchairs.

The figures from industry body the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) came after a clutch of retailers - including big names like HMV and Waterstone's - complained about the impact of online sales on their business.

The festive surge followed a year in which shoppers became increasingly confident in the internet, with the amount spent online on goods and services up by 32% to £19.2 billion over the course of 2005.

A total of 24 million UK consumers shopped online last year, spending an average of £816 each during the year and £208 over the Christmas period. Sales peaked in the week starting December 5, when £653 million was spent online.

The IMRG said this was part of a "step change" after consumers refused to trawl the shops looking for gifts.

However, IMRG chief executive James Roper said a large number of goods were still hard to find or unavailable online, in areas such as high-end fashion and real estate.

He said: "Even leading retailers often only make a small proportion of their total inventory available online, and many don't bother with spares at all. So huge growth potential remains for the merchants who plug these holes."

HMV was one of a number of retailers that suffered from the success of online operators this Christmas. Smaller music and video store MVC almost went bust before Christmas, with administrators blaming supermarket and internet sales.

High street chains with internet operations recorded major increases in the number of goods sold online.

Boots said its internet business, boots.com, now sells more goods than its largest store, while Tesco said a record one million customers shopped at tesco.com for gifts, food and alcohol in November and December.

Department store John Lewis banked sales of more than £100 million from its online and catalogue business in 2005.

The IMRG expects UK online spending to grow by 36% in 2006, predicting sales of £26 billion for the year.