Retailwatch: January 2011

Welcome to Retailwatch for January 2011.

To view the full report, click here.

Our retail report paints an interesting picture this month with total retail spend up 4.7% on January 2010. Overall most categories are relatively flat, with no huge increases or declines. Key Christmas categories that experienced high spend peaks in the lead-up to the holidays are also returning to more normal spend levels, as would be expected.

The category to experience the highest increase was Fuel/Service Stations, which is up 11.6% on January 2010. The rising price of petrol (up 15% this month on January 2010) explains some of this, but this difference indicates that consumers are holding their purse strings more tightly and filling up slightly less at the pump.

Categories to see decent year on year increases as we start 2011, are Cafe/Restaurants/Bars (up 5.8% on January 2010), Liquor Stores (up 5.6% on January 2010) and Supermarkets/Food Retailers (up 6.7% on January 2010). These are interesting categories to co-exist in the 'increased' camp; often when we see an increase in Supermarket spend, the Restaurants category decreases slightly and there is an indication that more people are choosing to cook and eat at home. This is clearly not the case in this instance. Rising food prices are likely to account for some of the increases across all these categories but it also looks as though we were consuming more as the holiday cheer drags on, whether out and about, or in the comfort of our own homes.

Spend in the Travel & Accommodation category has increased by 30% in January 2011, as compared to December 2010. This is hardly surprising, as many people are on holiday over this period, we would expect to see a large growth in spend. However, even with the seasonal effect removed, the category is performing well. In year on year figures, Travel & Accommodation spend is up 3.8% on January last year indicating that slightly more people are getting away, or booking holidays over this time.

The other categories are relatively flat in January, as compared to January 2010, with the largest decrease being 1.5% in the Books & Stationery Stores category. Similarly, the Furniture/Appliances/Electronics category has decreased 1.2% year on year.

Unlike last month, when there were some regional differences evident in retail spend, January sees a similar picture across the various parts of the country, with all areas seeing an increase of between 4% and 5% in total retail spend; a positive sign for the start of the year.

Retailwatch can be used to monitor trends in specific categories that are relevant to you while also building a broader picture of the overall retail environment.

The team at Datamine can also help you explore further the impacts of retail industry trends on your business. If you have any questions or would like further information that would help support your business decision making needs, please don’t hesitate to call us.

Datamine offers a range of retail tools, including merchant specific market share reporting, catalogue optimisation, media return on investment, campaign analysis, customer profiling, churn and cross sell models, data cleaning and management and consulting.