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With Tesco's grip on the nation's grocery choices, you might think it doesn't have much to worry it. Its onwards march to market dominance looks assured.

But think again. What keeps the supermarket giant's bosses awake at night is: Amazon. The online retailer is not making serious inroads into the core grocery market - not yet, anyway. It's in electronics and household goods where Amazon is able to undercut rivals like Tesco, using its far lower retail overheads.

With yet sluggish figures out from the Scottish Retail Consortium this morning, that's one reason why supermarkets are particularly grumpy about the £30m extra hit on business rates being imposed from next year by the Scottish government.

So yes, it's true: there are bigger issues in shopping than the rush to get Christmas presents bought and delivered with Arctic weather bearing down.

And one is the impact of online. While it's understandably lauded for its price, choice and convenience, it also represents a significant threat to traditional shops as well as supermarkets.

Bookshop survival

This week, we've seen evidence from a Verdict Research survey of 4000 shoppers suggesting that 57% of people will buy books from Amazon, but 20% would choose to do so from WH Smith, and 19% from Waterstone's.

Purchasing DVDs, 26% would buy from HMV, but twice as many from Amazon.

It's a vast market advantage. And with HMV, owner of Waterstone's, recently reporting a sharp drop in sales, the competition from Amazon's aggressive pricing calls into question the very survival of Britain's last national chain of book stores.

Sara Miller, retail specialist at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Scotland, highlights the allied threat from digital publishing: "With the prospect that the new generation of eReaders may achieve the long awaited breakthrough of luring more people away from pen and ink, the publishing industry will need to plan and implement new strategies now in order to stem the flow.

"There are great opportunities that come with the change to digital, and it will be those publishers and retailers that resist change, and stick to existing content and business models that will face the greatest risk."

Retail cat and mouse

While the Scottish Retail Consortium speaks of nervous uncertainty over weather-hit December retail, other evidence is of what PwC sees as a cat and mouse game.

Customers know there are bargains to be had, and they're holding off. But retailers have got their stock under much better control than in the past two years. Discounts are less evident on the high street, and they're hoping to hold their prices until Christmas.

Two years ago, 80% of retailers surveyed by PwC were highlighting discounted goods in their shop windows, but this year, it's down to 55%. For them, that's progress.

The other big issue just beyond Christmas is the impact of the VAT rise, from 17.5% to 20%. That may bring forward some purchases. But what happens after it's introduced in early January?

KPMG has also been busy surveying, with a warning of an inflationary price hike. While some say the pressure on retailers is such that many will absorb the additional tax bill and hold prices steady, the Big Four accountancy firm says we can expect the opposite.

It found that some 60% of retailers and consumer goods manufacturers will use the VAT rise to mask bigger increases. That would help claw back some of the margins cut as input costs have risen but prices have been kept subdued.

Ultra-discount

That comes with a warning from KPMG to its retail clients: don't raise prices without being clear about the likely consequences for demand.

It says two-thirds of companies that implemented recession discounts did so without fully understanding the impact on demand.

And for those who think the consuming public will overlook the VAT-plus-plus pricing approach, bear in mind some of the big winners from the recession have been ultra-discount, price-driven pound shops.

Meanwhile, with inflation still above the Bank of England target, another survey reaches me from Lanarkshire. This is a sample of one, offered up by restaurant proprietor Ajmal Mushtaq.

He says of his eponymous establishment in Hamilton that he's anticipating 10% price increases for those eating out: 2.5% more on VAT, 4.9% food inflation and 2.5% in other costs such as fuel for his fleet of delivery Minis.

In the age of austerity, it seems 2011 may also be the year to cut back on the poppadoms.