Retail trade in the UK - statistics & facts

Supermarkets: champions of the sector

Non-specialized food stores (e.g., supermarkets) take up the lion’s share of the retail landscape in the UK. Together with other types of food retailers (e.g., corner stores), predominantly food stores enjoyed an average annual sales volume above the 150 billion British pound mark for the last 15 years. While the year of the pandemic caused a notable drop in the sales of food stores in 2020, the sector saw over 176 billion British pounds in retail sales in 2019, a record number over the measured period of time. Considering the predominant role supermarkets play in the UK retail sector, it should not come as a surprise that the top three retailers in the country are supermarket giants. Tesco sits at the top of that list, with almost four times the sales value of Amazon UK.

Online retail

Throughout 2020, COVID-19 containment measures and several lockdowns forced brick-and-mortar stores to close down. While this did not stop consumers from shopping, it did make them turn to online channels at unprecedented levels. Just in the year 2020, online retail sales in the UK grew by more than 20 billion British pounds and nearly reached the 100 billion British pound mark, representing an increase of about 46 percent compared to the previous year. This marks a substantial change given the fact that the year-over-year growth in online retail sales value had been fluctuating between 10 and 20 percent for the last ten years. Since the first half of 2020, internet sales as a proportion of total retail constituted more than one-third of all retail sales in the UK. In the most recently reported months, the online sales share stabilized at around 27 percent.

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