Brexit has had very little effect on footfall or bricks and mortar retail sales. The real game-changer is online and particularly Amazon; for non-pleasurable shopping of lower ticket items, people are increasingly simply ordering with one swipe on their phones. When people do go out to shop, it is often now for a single item that they have researched online. The face of the average UK consumer has completely changed. Brexit has nothing to do with it.
The role that high streets and shopping centres now play is changing – shopping is primarily a leisure experience now. Increasingly, people are attracted to the high street because of restaurants and cafes, which goes some way to explaining high street footfall outperforming retail parks and retail as a whole in February. Retail Parks however are often very uninspiring places that are more functional. Parking is easy, so people will still go, but the retailers must be finding it difficult to counter the online shift. The exception is for big-ticket items that people want to see and touch or talk to a salesperson about, such as a sofa or large home appliance.
Comments made are in relation to British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) monthly Springboard monitor for February:
- High street footfall up 0.1 per cent year-on-year in Feb compared to a 2.9 per cent drop in the same month last year.
- Overall footfall fell 1 per cent year-on-year in February this year, compared with a 1.3 per cent fall in January this year.
- Retail parks saw a year-on-year drop of 1.6 per cent in February, compared with a 0.4 per cent drop in January.
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