29 March 2024, 12:16
By Furniture News Jan 14, 2019

Discounting fails to offset Christmas footfall decline

According to the BRC-Springboard Footfall and Vacancies Monitor, store footfall in December fell by -2.6%, making it the 13th month of consecutive decline – yet the drop was smaller than in the previous year, when it fell sharply by -3.5%.

The monitor, which covers the five weeks to 29th December 2018, states that high street footfall declined by -2.1%, retail parks by -2.1%, and shopping centre footfall by -3.9% YOY.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson OBE says: “The December results conclude a difficult year for retailers, with footfall dropping by -2.6% over the year. This continued drop, now onto its 13th month, continues to put pressure on bricks-and-mortar stores up and down the country. It comes at a time when retail is in the midst of a transformation, investing in technology and the online offer, as well as offering more experiences in physical shops. This is evolving many high streets into a destination for wider services, as well as shopping.

“However, many well-known brands have disappeared from our high streets, and without Government intervention there will be more to come."

Diane Wehrle, Springboard's marketing and insights director, adds: “The -2.6% decline in footfall in December 2018 – the ninth in 10 years, and the seventh consecutive year of decline - is undeniably strong evidence that retailers can no longer rely on Christmas trading to redeem revenue lost earlier in the year. Indeed, over the past seven years the shift in footfall away from December has been so significant that the gap between both December and July and between December and November in terms of footfall volumes has halved over the past seven years.

“Following drops in footfall of -2% in October and -3.2% in November in 2018, unless the dynamics underpinning consumer demand were going to rapidly shift, it was always going to be unrealistic to expect footfall to recover. It was only the fact the third week of December in 2017 was so adversely impacted by snow that the same week this year delivered only a modest drop in footfall of -0.1%. If footfall had remained at the level recorded in the first two weeks of the month (-5.5% and -4.5% lower than in 2017), then the overall result for the month would have been a drop of more than -4%.

"If nothing else is learnt from December 2018, it is that discounting does not stimulate customer activity, and is severely eroding the strength of Christmas as a major trading period. Ignoring the warning signs and continuing to bring sales forward undermines profitability and, ultimately, longer-term innovation in retailing.”

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