It’s The Least Wonderful Time of the Year...? 2018 to be Worst Christmas for Retail since 2008.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) came out with the news that the retail sales for December 2018 were flat, resulting in being their worst Christmas in 10 years, giving many UK businesses a bad experience. This left them in confusion, as it appears that the price cuts did not do enough to influence shoppers to spend their money.

Barclaycard also made a report stating that the spending rate of consumers grew by 1.8% year-on-year in December which is the lowest growth rate since March 2016.  This shows an uncertainty in the economic growth and that retail is at a decline. 

Less customers chose to spend a significant amount of money this Christmas, favouring saving up than splashing out, decreasing sales by 0.7% from December 2017.  All things being said, there was a growth in food being bought, and the performance between the online and High Street markets have remained to be doing better, though online retail sales did slow down a little.

It will be interesting to see how retail and UK businesses do in 2019, and if we will see a shift in consumer spending patterns.