Have shoppers deserted the malls and big department stores?
May 18, 2016 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
That certainly seems to be true in the case of UK. A recent report compiled by Markit on behalf of Visa Europe suggests that online spending has grown at the fastest rate for 16 months with e-commerce growth rate of 8.4 percent year-on-year. The report that reflects overall consumer spending across the UK showed total consumer spending in April saw an increase by 2.5 percent year-on-year. Clothing and footwear saw the biggest fall since September 2014 but some of the strongest rates of expansion were seen across recreation and culture (up 7.9 percent), hotels, restaurant bars (plus 6.6 percent) and household goods (3 percent).
“Growth in consumables remains evident, but consumer spending is increasingly focused on the experience economy,” Kevin Jenkins, Director at Visa Europe said in a note. “Eating out, booking holidays and discovering new experiences are all driving spending growth at a time when the lower cost of living is creating higher disposable incomes. In a month of mostly growth, the only sector to disappoint was clothing and footwear, again highlighting this shift.”
The trend was highlighted in the UK retail sales this month that reported the sharpest drop in data in April after sales fell 0.9 percent on a year earlier, the biggest drop since last August. However, online spending continued to rise.
“April saw retailers growing their online non-food sales by 6.6 percent which, despite being a healthy increase, is the slowest growth since April 2013,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive at British Retail Consortium, said in an analysis note. “However, online remained a significant proportion of total non-food retail sales at 20.9 percent; only fractionally down on the highest on record.”
