About the market:

“The significance of Christmas to retailers should not be underestimated. The fourth quarter in general, and December in particular, account for a disproportionate proportion of annual sales. Some 28.8% of total annual sales were made in the fourth quarter in 2004, and 12.5% of total annual sales were made in December. Both figures showed a slight decrease on the previous year.

Tesco reported by far the most impressive result in the grocery sector. The company increased like-for-like sales by 9.3% on top of a 7.5% increase in the previous year. Several major food retailers struggled to get anywhere near this level of performance. Meanwhile the general merchandise category struggled. Boots the Chemists was one of the few major retailers in positive like-for-like territory, while in the clothing sector there were several exceptional double-digit like-for-like growth performances with Monsoon and New Look leading the way.”

About the report:

Fusing together the most innovative consumer research and latest market analysis, Mintel’s report offers you all the insight and inspiration you need for designing clever, creative and successful marketing strategies. Use Mintel's research to:

Discover the winners and losers over Christmas 2004, learning from their mistakes and strokes of genius.

Understand the factors that dictated trading successes and failures.

Identify consumer attitudes towards Christmas shopping.

Pinpoint the key customer groups for this vital period in the retail calendar and discover the communication strategies that will best capture their attention.

Intriguing findings include:

Around a quarter of consumers stated that they spent less than last year, slightly above the response rate given for intended behaviour in the pre-Christmas research.

Online purchasing of gifts increased significantly in 2004. Some 26% of the sample shopped online before Christmas 2004, compared to 12% in the previous year.

The most popularly-sought improvement to the Christmas shopping experience is shorter queues. Some 83% of adults cited this as the aspect of Christmas shopping that they would most like to change. 78% would like more staff to provide help and advice.