The RetailX UK Top500 reached a milestone this year: one full decade of performance-led research into the UK’s sophisticated ecommerce and multichannel retail market. Over the 10 years, the make up of the Top500 has changed.
The first UK Top500 Footprint report in 2014, followed by the first performance-based UK Top500 report in 2015, were just the start of what is now a wide-ranging research-led exploration of ecommerce and multichannel retailing, across markets and retail categories as well as formats ranging from online to podcasts and webinars, events and now mobile apps.
This has built over time, led by our readers, researchers and writers, as well as by commercial support, to follow customer demand and retail provision. Today, our coverage includes retail performance and country reports as it continues to evolve with the launch of 360° reports, which now bring together market research and retailer analysis.
Throughout, our coverage has been led by RetailX research. The below graphic offers thought-provoking insights into how, over the last decade, the make up of the Top500 has changed. Retailers selling other brands’ products have collectively seen a steady decline in their share of the list, from 43.8% in 2015 to 30.6% in 2024.
Over this time, they have ceded ground primarily to brands, which now account for 50.6% of the Top500, up from 43.6% in 2015. Brands’ membership is declining from a 2022 peak of 55.4%, most likely reflecting a peak in consumer interest in buying direct from brands during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is now marketplaces, rather than retailers, that are growing their share of the list, from 12.6% in 2015 to 18.8% in 2024.
We’ve mirrored that shift in membership through our research coverage. In 2024, we expand our focus to the customer, with the launch of SustainabilityX and ConsumerX mobile apps that will put our own consumer research into the hands of our readers, making this available for them to use, share and republish in their own analyses and presentations.
Understanding retail over time
Since 2014, RetailX has researched more than 11,000 retailers and direct-to-consumer brands, assessing and ranking their performance on more than 300 metrics. We produce the only objective, performance-based ranking of Europe’s retailers. Our influential annual reports include the UK Top500, The EU Top1000 and the UK Growth 1000. In recent years, their reach has extended to cover individual markets and regions in more detail – with the Spain, France, Germany and Nordics Top100 reports. The Growth series of reports has also expanded to the USA, giving a new understanding of the up-and-coming retail brands from around the world that are selling to this enormous market.
Over the last decade, shoppers have engaged with retail disruption and changed the way they buy. RetailX has followed, with the now well-established Brand Index and the European Marketplaces report exploring the ways in which retail businesses of all types are enabling and supporting shoppers to buy wherever, whenever and however best suits them.
Understanding the consumer
Our tenth year of research marks the launch of an exciting new RetailX project that puts our research findings and tools into the hands of our members for them to reuse in the way that best suits them. New ConsumerX and SustainabilityX mobile apps, now in beta, will fully launch in the spring to subscribers who want to use them to ask their own questions of our research, create their own charts, and filter existing charts to show new perspectives on our findings. Pre-registration is already open at ConsumerX.net.
This is an excerpt from the RetailX UK Top500 2024 report. Throughout the pages of this report, we map out how, for many retailers, the balance of retailing over the last ten years of our UK Top500 analysis has changed.
Some have moved from store-first to digital-first while others have moved from pureplay to multichannel retailing. We’ve also seen brands and marketplaces grow their positions in the market, the former now accounting for half of the Top500 by number, the latter for more than half of traffic to the Top500. This report charts performance that has improved so strongly over a decade, it’s raised the bar for all those who sell, or plan on selling, in this market.
Stay informed
Our editor carefully curates two newsletters a week filled with up-to-date news, analysis and research, click here to subscribe to the FREE newsletter sent straight to your inbox and why not follow us on LinkedIn to receive the latest updates on our research and analysis.
