Ipsos Retail Performance has released its latest monthly report, analyzing the retail traffic in UK retail environments and forecasting the changes across the UK regions for the month of November.
As people are getting ready for Christmas the month-on-month change from September to October showed a 0.3% footfall increase in the UK overall. London & The South East and Northern England performed below the average experiencing an overall decrease of 2.2% and 1.2% respectively compare to September’s data. Scotland & Northern Ireland experienced an increase of 4.1%, the greatest regional increase in footfall in the month. When analysing the year-on-year trend, retail footfall experienced a 9.1% decline in October versus October 2016 with all the regions showing a deep decrease in footfall.
Black Friday weekend on the 24th of November is coming soon. That is instrumental in explaining why footfall, is predicted by Ipsos Retail Performance to increase by 1.7% in November against October with slight variations across the different regions of the country. The Midlands is the only region expected to experience a decrease (of 3.8%). SW England & Wales is expected to experience a marginal footfall gain of 0.1%. Better news for Scotland & N Ireland, London & The South East and Northern Ireland which are predicted to experience and increase in footfall of 4.5%, 4.9% and 2% accordingly
Therefore, with the upcoming Christmas holiday and the winter season the retail traffic is expected to continue its upward trend from October.
Sonia Martin-Gutierrez, CEO at Bayfield Training