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U.K. RETAILERS BOOST IT SPENDING: SURVEY

LONDON -- The estimated average investment in information systems by retailers in the United Kingdom was 1.4% of sales this year, up from 1.1% but still considered below U.S. retail IT expenditures.This was the finding of "IT in Retail 2004," a new survey of the IT systems used by the U.K.'s top 100 retailers, published by Retail Knowledge Bank, a division of Emap here, with research by Martec International.

LONDON -- The estimated average investment in information systems by retailers in the United Kingdom was 1.4% of sales this year, up from 1.1% but still considered below U.S. retail IT expenditures.

This was the finding of "IT in Retail 2004," a new survey of the IT systems used by the U.K.'s top 100 retailers, published by Retail Knowledge Bank, a division of Emap here, with research by Martec International. Individual U.K. figures range from 0.3% of sales to 4.7%.

Spending, the report suggested, was driven in part by investment in new "chip and PIN" implementations -- payment systems that use chip-based cards and personal ID numbers -- as card fraud liability shifts to retailers in 2005 in the United Kingdom.

In the supermarket segment, Tesco, the U.K.'s leading chain, spent $648 million (2.2% of sales) on IT -- almost as much as the next five put together. Tesco is followed by Sainsbury ($390 million) and Safeway ($129.6 million), Wal-Mart-owned Asda ($62.7 million), Somerfield ($30 million) and Morrisons ($25.5 million).