Amazon claimed a quarter of all Christmas games, music and video sales

Kantar Worldpanel data has revealed the extent of Amazon’s dominance of the UK Christmas entertainment market.

For the 12 weeks ending December 21st, one in four pounds spent on video games, physical music and video in the UK went to Amazon, which claimed a 25.6 per cent share of the market.

Online retailers claimed 39 per cent of all entertainment spend.

Tesco was the second largest with 14.7 per cent followed by HMV (13.9%) and GAME (10.8%). HMV’s position as the UK’s third biggest entertainment retailer should be boosted further this year when it begins taking orders online once again.

Asda and Sainsbury’s both saw their share of the market fall year-on-year, although Argos was up slightly at 4.4 per cent. Tesco was the best performing supermarket, claiming 21 per cent of all UK FIFA 15 sales and 28 per cent of Frozen sales in the process.

Amazon performed exceptionally well this Christmas and for the first time ever captured more than a quarter of Britain’s physical entertainment market,” Kantar Worldpanel’s strategic insight director Fiona Keenan sais.

Its performance was aided by the increasing popularity of online retail which accounted for 39 per cent of entertainment spending in the run up to Christmas – its highest ever level – growing by three per cent year-on-year.

While consumers’ average online spend increased by six per cent this Christmas, they still spent less than they did when shopping in physical stores as retailers struggled to get them to shop impulsively online. A third of in-store purchases were bought purely on impulse, creating an additional 119 million for the industry, but when shopping online this proportion halved. Retailers need to identify ways to encourage impulse purchasing in an online environment, particularly as so much of our spend goes through this channel.”