The survey was undertaken by pfa Research on behalf of multi-channel systems specialist Actinic and involved 277 randomly-selected small and medium-sized retailers, of whom 96 had e-commerce websites. Key findings are that the number of retailers with e-commerce sites has risen to over 35 per cent, from 11 per cent in 2006. Of those that don’t have a site, 22 per cent claim they have firm plans to launch one.
A quarter of businesses questioned operate across three channels (the High Street, e-commerce and mail or telephone orders). A third sampled have EPoS in-store. Of the remainder, 13 per cent state they have firm plans to implement a system. Chris Barling, CEO at Actinic, comments: “Times are tough for retailers so I’m sure that the take up of e-commerce will be significant in 2009 as it is the only channel where profits and growth are still on the up. However, the use of integrated software applications across multiple channels is still limited to a minority of retailers, so there is a clear market here.”
The full report is available free of charge at: http://downloads.actinic.com/docs/Actinic-SME-Retail-Technology-Report-2008.pdf
|
