Christmas spending expected to fall
Spending this Christmas could fall for the first time in twenty years according to retail research house Verdict.
It predicts that losses in the non-food sector and a slow down in food inflation will mean consumers spend around £500m less in the important final quarter of the year.
This will be a decline of 0.7% year-on-year primarily driven by a £1bn decline in housing related sectors.
The grocery sector is still expected to see growth, despite slowing food inflation, up 2.3% to £723m.
Verdict lead analyst Maureen Hinton said: “Though women are much more nervous about spending than men – mainly because they usually have greater control and visibility of the family budget – we believe they will cut back less on principle Christmas expenditure than on peripheral spending such as restaurants, entertainment and big ticket items.”
She added: “Temporary recession fatigue will set in over Christmas and though 41% of women intend to spend less overall they will want to ensure they and their families look and feel good, eat well and have a good time.”
Despite the post strike shoppers are still expected to spend £6.8bn online this Christmas, an increase of £837m.
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Readers' comments (2)
Ian Middleton | 17-Nov-2009 11:41 am
There are some very accurate figures in this latest pearl of doom from Verdict. Exactly 41%, not 40%, not 42.
It would be useful in these articles if we could see some detail behind the study. The basis of these conclusions. If it was a survey, what size was the sample, what biases were taken into account, any statistical analysis, weighting etc.
Just coming out with this stuff in isolation sounds like pure speculation. I'm sure its not but personally I'd like to see a bit of meat on the bones in future. Otherwise this is just propaganda and/or some free advertising for a consultancy firm.
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WJ Turner | 17-Nov-2009 1:19 pm
Sounds like complete rubbish!
Latest numbers from John Lewis are +14%. OK, smaller stores are not doing as well, but for sales to fall against last year something very bad has got to happen
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