If you are pressed for time, this week’s blog post has a roundup of statistics we think are interesting in the retail space.
- The Office for National Statistics (ONS) rather unsurprisingly reported that online shopping had gained a greater share of retail sales than seen for a number of years in 2020; caused by non-essential retail having to close their doors. They also reported that after shops reopened, online as a share of total retail dipped only slightly before growing again. Will there be any turning away from online in the future?
- The BBC reported that Ocado believes grocery shopping has changed for good and this makes us wonder if this is the case for all shopping categories, only time will tell and we’re sure the ONS data will show us how this develops over time.
- Amazon's latest trading statistics report shows an annual sales revenue growth of 38% in 2020 vs 2019 – we don’t know what the forecast was for the year, but we suspect they’ve surpassed any growth predictions due to Covid-19. We saw similar growth % from Next with 36% growth in online sales YOY for the Christmas period in 2020, this was reported in the Econsultancy stat roundup last week.
- Whilst this sounds really positive, The Guardian shared data from The British Retail Consortium (BRC) last month which reported that UK retail sales have seen the largest decline in 25 years in 2020 (since records began in 1995). Total sales fell by 0.3% and you can read the full report here.
- Statista has published a UK sales growth forecast and for 2021 all retail is expected to grow by 3.9%, this is broken down by category and some are forecasted to have marginal gains such as Furniture & Floor Coverings and Clothing (that is when you discount 2020!).
- Finally the Bank of England reported that private savings accounts were up £125 billion in 2020 as households held onto their income as a consequence of the pandemic and employment uncertainty. The report speculated that whilst 70% of these savings would be retained whilst the uncertainty persisted an economic & retail boom could be anticipated.
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