What you need to know
Spain has only one department store chain, El Corte Inglés, making it the focus of this report. El Corte Inglés is struggling from slower sales growth following a recovery in sales in 2015, with turnover increasing 2.8% to €9.7 billion in 2016 and forecast to slow to 2.2% in 2017. It is facing growing competition from more agile, lower-priced and specialist sector players, such as Inditex in fashion, Mercadona in food, IKEA in home and MediaMarkt in electricals.
El Corte Inglés remains a very popular place to shop, with close to three fifths (58%) of Spaniards having bought non-food products there in the last 12 months either in-store or online according to our consumer research. However, the department store needs to broaden its appeal to attract younger and less affluent customers.
Areas covered in this report
This report covers the department store sector in Spain, including market sizes, retailers’ sales and forecasts, along with our in-depth consumer data, which analyses shoppers’ behaviour and attitudes.
There is no hard and fast definition for a department store. But, we would expect stores to typically trade from a minimum of 1,000 sq m and stock at least half a dozen different broad product categories, with any single category unlikely to account for more than two-thirds of turnover, and usually significantly less than this.
As a minimum, all department stores covered in this report sell adult and children’s apparel, lingerie, fashion accessories, footwear, beauty products and some homewares. Larger full-line stores have a much wider product assortment.
Some department stores have food halls, and these are typically upscale and geared towards fine foods and delicatessen, and so are differentiated from the everyday supermarket.
The offer usually covers a mix of concessions and own-bought ranges, increasingly with a private label element within the own-bought assortment.
National statistics offices do not collate data on the department store sector. Around Europe, department stores are typically included within the broader Mixed Goods Retailers sector. This is something of a catch-all sector covering not only large-space department stores, but also variety stores, non-food discount stores and a whole host of other retailers that do not specialise in any one particular non-food product category.
For our consumer research this year we asked respondents questions on the following topics:
Which department stores they had shopped at
Responses to a variety of attitudinal statements about department stores.
