What you need to know
As retailers endeavour to keep up with evolving consumer shopping habits, the challenges facing the retail market are as apparent as ever.
Online continues to grow its share of retail sales, however stores remain integral to the purchase process and there are opportunities for shopping locations to tap into the growing spend on leisure, while using digital technology to merge the offline and online experience.
Although high streets have been facing competition from the out-of-town developments, several consumer trends offer potential for these local centres going forward. They are the most likely to benefit from the aging population, yet they are also well placed to take advantage of the convenience shopping habits of the young.
We are cautiously optimistic for the outlook of the retail market. Uncertainties remain, yet there has been an improvement in retail sales as the year has progressed. We forecast growth of 2.4% for 2016.
Products covered in this report
The retail locations used in this report are based on the different types of shopping mission.
Local centres – small high streets and neighbourhood stores. These are small centres, primarily for top-up shopping and satisfying immediate needs. So they include everything from corner shops through to small high streets which we think need to be developed as local centres. Such high streets have very few multiples.
Major centres – city centres and major shopping centres such as Bluewater or Westfield. These centres are for big shopping trips when a large selection of major multiples is wanted. They are the place for comparison shopping and have department stores and major multiples including Marks & Spencer (M&S).
Retail parks – collections of out-of-town non-food superstores. Typically, these contain furniture, electricals and DIY retailers. But they can also have retailers such as M&S, Next and Boots in them. We specifically exclude the grocery superstores from these.
Grocery superstores – the superstores of the big four food retailers – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.
Online – any online sales, whether through a pureplay or store-based retailer.
