October 22 2007
Retail gloom follows sporting doom
After a trying (oops - pun not intended) weekend of English sport, with first the England Rugby Team just failing to best the 'Boks and then Hamilton trying to win the Grand Prix while selecting reverse gear, we hear news that's not just about life and death - it's way more important than that... the retail figures for the weekend.
Our friends over at the Retail Traffic Index (RTI) - those detail-obsessed researchers who measure footfall in some 3100 stores in the UK - say that the number of people visiting non-food stores for the 20th and 21st (the Saturday and Sunday of sporting combat) were down 5.4% compared with last year.This apparently is the norm - England's success in the Rugby World Cup in 2003 dented traffic by 9.5%.
This measurement is of the actual footfall in stores and not spend, but there's clearly a migration from 'general shopping' on the weekend to the sofa, maybe via the off licence.
According to Dr. Tim Denison, Director of Knowledge
Management at SPSL and leading retail psychologist; “This is another set-back for non-food retailers, one that
they could have done without at present. Even though the sports action on both
days was after most stores had closed, the change in usual weekend routines
among many consumers was evident during the trading days. On the positive side,
though, we can look forward to a future uplift in sports goods, as the events
have undoubtedly stimulated new interest among a new generation of fans."
It'll be interesting to see whether there's been an uplift in web sales for the weekend or whether the sporting adventures have simply temporarily overtaken Britain's first and most successful sporting activity - Shopping!
