Footfall: Christmas on a knife edge

15 December 2011

Summary

Week commencing 28 November 2011

The number of shoppers was boosted by a combination of the effects of public sector strikes and the end of the month payday in the last week of November.

The year-on-year growth was helped by soft comparatives on the previous year when snow hit shopper numbers.

On an annual basis both the high street and out-of-town footfall measures performed well growing by 15.6% and 15.9% respectively. Shopping centres also performed well rising by 8.9%.

Shopping centres saw the biggest boost to footfall, week-on-week, up by 11.4%.

Week commencing 5 December 2011

The year-on-year comparisons showed that footfall in all locations fell compared with the same week last year.

The number of shoppers on high streets fell sharply, by 2.6%, followed by shopping centres and out-of-town which fell by 1.9% and 0.2% respectively.

Footfall fell back for both high streets and out-of-town falling by 2.2% and 1.4% respectively, compared with the previous week.

Footfall for shopping centres continued to rise, up 1.3%, compared with the previous week.

Stephen Robertson, British Retail Consortium Director General, said: “The final week of November was exceptional for footfall. Many people had just been paid and headed out, a sharp contrast to the same week last year which was blighted by heavy snow. The day of industrial action was also used by many, off-work for the day, as an opportunity to hit the shops. In fact, the number of people visiting shopping centres was up by 40 per cent on the day of the strikes compared with the same day last year.

“Retailers are telling us the increased footfall did translate into an increase in sales although some of this was spending brought forward, undermining shopper numbers the following week. Footfall should be on a rising trend as Christmas gets closer. This drop shows festive sales are still on a knife edge. The fact Christmas Day falls on a Sunday will mean some shoppers leaving purchases until the final Saturday, but with only one full week of trading to go before the holidays the final result is very much hanging in the balance.”

Diane Wehrle, Research Director at Springboard, said: “These figures are an early indication that high streets are experiencing more challenging trading conditions than their shopping centre and out of town counterparts. They suggest that rising public transport and car parking costs are encouraging shoppers to go out of town to shop, particularly if they are becoming even more hard-pressed and focused on what they are buying. Both transport and parking charges are issues which Mary Portas referred to in her review this week, highlighting an increasing need for high streets to capitalise on consumer demand for choice in the lead-up to Christmas.

“It's also important to highlight that the end of November was always going to see an uplift in footfall, when compared to 2010 figures as much of the UK was hit by heavy snow at this time. What will be interesting to see is whether there is a revival in footfall to the high streets in the last two weeks before Christmas as consumers look for last-minute deals from retailers.”

Notes:

Footfall measure: The BRC-Springboard Retail Footfall Monitor gathers data on customer activity in town and city centre locations, and in out of town shopping locations, throughout theUKusing the latest generation automated technology. The Monitor records approximately 62 million footfall counts per week at over 500 different shopping locations in 152 towns and cities across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The Monitor covers the main centre in each nation/region and a representative sample of secondary and smaller town centres.

The Monitor provides the only available measures of the performance of town centre and out of town shopping locations in theUK.

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