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Ofcom: UK beats the US... in race to buy online tat

New research shows £1,000-a-head spending habit among Blighty's online shoppers

British people are the world's biggest online shoppers, according to new research from the regulator Ofcom.

Blighty's sofa shoppers in their slippers now spend £1,017 a year online, up by almost £150 from 2012.

About three-quarters of Brits buy stuff on the internet once a month, while 24 per cent make purchases every single week.

Some 58 per cent of people said that shopping online was simply "easier" than dragging their body around the shops.

In Britain, 70 per cent of people said they felt safe paying for products online a credit card, a figure which drops to just 62 per cent in the US and just 30 per cent in France.

"The UK is by quite a long way the place where people spend most online," said James Thickett, Ofcom's director of research and market development.

"There are a number of reasons for this. We have a long history of catalogue shopping in the UK.

"What this has done is that we trust people to deliver parcels, and we're used to getting parcels delivered to our homes and we're used to using credit cards."

The research was published in Ofcom's annual International Communications Market Report, which has not yet been published online. ®

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