This report series covers the department store sectors in the five leading 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 also available.

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

• Which department stores they had bought anything from, either in-store or online in the last six months

• Attitudes to department stores, what they should offer, what they are valued for and how much their pricing can be trusted.

These questions were asked in all countries but the research for the UK looked at these issues in greater depth.

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 (including electricals in some cases) and fashion. They are stores designed for customers 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 that 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.