This report series covers the five large Western European countries – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

The data in its entirety is contained in the single copy five-country report. Single country reports are available.

Our exclusive consumer research spans all five countries. In each of these markets, we asked consumers:

• Which department stores they had visited or bought anything from in the last six months.

• Satisfaction with various aspects of their most used department store’s operations.

• Additional questions were asked to consumers for the UK report.

A department store is to some extent easier to understand than to define. In theory it is a store trading from multiple floors and selling a wide range of merchandise. How many floors and how many different ranges is more difficult to specify, but in general they sell beauty products, some homewares and fashion. They are stores designed to linger in and often include a café or restaurant.

There are two sources of information for the size of the department store sector.

Our preferred route is a bottom up analysis based on known sales of the leading players. The data for the largest department store groups in Europe is kept in Mintel’s own Retail Interactive database.

Most department stores are classified as “mixed goods retailers” (non-specialised stores with non-foods predominating) in the national industry statistics. As these statistics are available for almost all countries in Europe, this is a useful guide to how the department stores have performed. However, the definition includes many other retailers with a broad range which are definitely not department stores (such as Tati in France or Home Bargains in the UK).

Financial definitions used are:

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

• Operating profits: the return made on trading. This is the profit after depreciation, but before finance charges, tax, amortisation and any exceptional items, such as property profits or impairment charges.

• Pre-tax profits: Profit after all charges, including exceptional charges but before tax.

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

• Pre-tax margin: pre-tax profits as a percentage of sales.