The UK's "Office of Fair Trading has launched a fact-finding market study into online shopping Around 130,000 UK businesses now sell online. Internet sales are on a rampant growth curve. Further figures have been published by the IMRG, Netimperative - One in ten UK retail sales now online

The results show that 10% of all sales are now influenced by the internet, the breakdown is as follows:

• £30bn of retail spending is online, while £20bn of non-traditional retail such as gambling and banking is online.
• a further £30bn of offline retail sales is influenced by information gathered online
• in other words, £80bn of consumer spending is either online or influenced by the Web

Furthermore, the trend is growing faster, more than half of shoppers said they are planning to reduce their High street spending in 2006 while 45 per cent say that they are willing to increase their spending with online shops.

In addition, nine in ten (90%) shoppers researched goods online before buying them on the high street.