Published: 05 Oct 2012
Last Updated: 19 Aug 2013
Visa Europe's latest UK expenditure index brings a little autumnal cheer to British retailers. It has found that sales rose 3% in September as chilly folk dashed out to buy woollies and stock up on belly fat at their favourite eateries. That’s more than double the 1.2% increase in August.
High street shopping, referred to rather opaquely as ‘face to face’ spending in the report, is up 1.6% year on year, the first growth seen since March and the sharpest increase seen since October 2010. High street stalwart John Lewis has certainly noticed an uptick in consumer spending: total sales in the week to 29 September are up 26.5% from the same period last year. The department store chain says that trading had received a substantial boost from shoppers buying new coats and shoes for the coming winter.
Clothing and footwear spending overall is up a very respectable 6.1% in September, says Visa's data crunchers. But it’s not the key driver of sales growth. A surer sign of a return to consumer confidence is the spike in hotel and restaurant bookings where growth is up 8.2% year-on-year. Consumer spend on food and drink has increased at a slower pace, probably due to rising food prices, at 1.8% year-on-year.
On the world wide web, however, it’s a different picture. Online spending actually fell by 1.5% last month. Mail and telephone ordering (from mail-order catalogues etc) also saw a 3.7% decline, although you can tell that things are already hotting up for Christmas: total online sales decreased 9.3% the previous month. According to the ONS, that’s because people were watching the Olympics rather than buying stuff online.
All in all, however, it’s a spot of pre-festive cheer for the high street. This index is usually a pretty reliable barometer of consumer spending as £1 in £3 of all UK spending gets put on a Visa card.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, which compiles the report for Visa, is also upbeat in his forecast for future consumer spending; ‘Going forward, it seems likely that consumer spending will help boost the economy to a greater extent than it has done over the past two years, due to recent improvements in disposable incomes, lower inflation and rising employment.’
Huzzah!
High street shopping, referred to rather opaquely as ‘face to face’ spending in the report, is up 1.6% year on year, the first growth seen since March and the sharpest increase seen since October 2010. High street stalwart John Lewis has certainly noticed an uptick in consumer spending: total sales in the week to 29 September are up 26.5% from the same period last year. The department store chain says that trading had received a substantial boost from shoppers buying new coats and shoes for the coming winter.
Clothing and footwear spending overall is up a very respectable 6.1% in September, says Visa's data crunchers. But it’s not the key driver of sales growth. A surer sign of a return to consumer confidence is the spike in hotel and restaurant bookings where growth is up 8.2% year-on-year. Consumer spend on food and drink has increased at a slower pace, probably due to rising food prices, at 1.8% year-on-year.
On the world wide web, however, it’s a different picture. Online spending actually fell by 1.5% last month. Mail and telephone ordering (from mail-order catalogues etc) also saw a 3.7% decline, although you can tell that things are already hotting up for Christmas: total online sales decreased 9.3% the previous month. According to the ONS, that’s because people were watching the Olympics rather than buying stuff online.
All in all, however, it’s a spot of pre-festive cheer for the high street. This index is usually a pretty reliable barometer of consumer spending as £1 in £3 of all UK spending gets put on a Visa card.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, which compiles the report for Visa, is also upbeat in his forecast for future consumer spending; ‘Going forward, it seems likely that consumer spending will help boost the economy to a greater extent than it has done over the past two years, due to recent improvements in disposable incomes, lower inflation and rising employment.’
Huzzah!
