LONDON (Brand Republic) - Traditional retailers are offering better online prices than internet companies that are purely web-based, according to a new survey by credit card company Goldfish.
Products bought from web-based dotcoms are, on average, 12.7% more expensive than those bought online from traditional companies, according to Goldfish, owned by the utilities company Centrica. Prices between some companies vary by as much as 40%.
The findings come from information gathered from Goldfish鈥檚 website, which compares online prices for goods including domestic appliances, computers, CDs and books.
Its 鈥渙nline retail price index鈥 tracks the prices for around 1,300 frequently bought products and services over 150 e-commerce sites. The trend, according to this data, is that traditional companies are still undercutting the dotcoms.
The news comes less than a week after speakers at the UK Internet Summit in London spoke about the bleak outlook for pure-play dotcoms and predicted that traditional retailers would poach customers.
Recent dotcom casualties include CD retailer Boxman.com, which announced last Thursday that it was seeking voluntary liquidation unless a last-minute rescue deal was struck, and online health products retailer Nutravida.co.uk, which ceased trading earlier this month.
www.goldfish-guides.com