This report focuses on the seasonal events of the Autumn – Back-to-school, Halloween and Bonfire Night and we also look briefly at Christmas, though the information for Christmas (and Black Friday) is taken from Mintel’s report Christmas Shopping Habits – UK, February 2015. Mintel has commissioned consumer research specific to those three seasonal events (excluding Christmas).

The main themes of the report are to look into what people buy for these seasonal events and where they buy it. Using that data, comments by the retailers themselves and analysis of National Statistics, we have developed estimates of the boost to spending for each of these events.

As the consumer research makes clear, these events are important for retailers, but especially the food retailers for which they provide an excuse for event-specific merchandise which can fill space devoted to seasonal merchandise (mainly Easter, Summer, Christmas).

Overall, we find that these events provide a boost which is small in the context of all retail sales (<1%).

Readers may also find it useful to refer to the Mintel report, Seasonal Shopping Habits – UK, August 2014 and Seasonal Lifestyles – UK, July 2013.and Christmas Shopping Habits – UK, February 2014.

Financial definitions used are:

• Sales: turnover as reported by the company, excluding VAT.

• Operating profit: pre-tax profit plus interest, less non-trading income such as the sale of fixed assets and any exceptional items, including provisions.

• Pre-tax profit: the net trading profit after deducting all operating costs including depreciation and finance charges, but before deduction of tax, dividends and other appropriations.

• Operating margin: operating profit as a percentage of sales.

Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

• In general, all company sales data are quoted excluding VAT.

• Consumer spending data and retail sales data (including forecasts) are quoted including VAT unless specifically stated otherwise.

• The UK reduced the standard rate of VAT from 17.5% to 15% on 1 December 2008, before increasing it to 17.5% on 1 January 2010 and 20% on 4 January 2011.