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Retail Footfall Suffers Badly over Easter Fortnight

Figures from the Retail Traffic Index (RTI) by analysts SPSL, now part of global research company Synovate, show a significant 9.2% dropin footfall for the entire holiday fortnight against the Easter break last year, worse even than the fall of 5.2% forecast by SPSL. Even against the same calendar weeks of 2007, the boost from Easter was disappointingly small; shopper numbers were up by only 4.7%.

SPSL’s retail psychologist, Dr Tim Denison explains; “All the cards in the pack have fallen against retail this Easter, making it the quietest one this decade. The combination of poor weather, a very early Easter and shortened school breaks over the traditional holiday fortnight; on top of the growing underlying financial pressures on the consumer; put paid to any hope of buoyant Easter trading this year. Taking the two weeks as a whole, it was even quieter than we had predicted.

There were occasional days of lift, such as Good Friday, where shopper numbers generally were 4.1% higher than last year, but shopper numbers visiting the usual Easter winners; namely DIY and Garden centres, were actually well down against Good Friday last year; by 12.7%. The small uplift in general trading was more a matter of people deciding to shop early in the weekend rather than later, when the weather forecasts predicted more inclement conditions. I believe there will also be some more busy days to come over the next couple of weeks, on the back of residual school holidays, but these may well be outliers to the overall trend.

“Conditions remain very tricky. Retailers are constantly monitoring their sales and footfall figures to decide whether or not to stimulate trade with short-term price-cutting. Some have already chosen to go down that route, while others have elected to run clearance campaigns to offload seasonal stock. I have little doubt that this will be the busiest period for many a year for retail marketers and merchandisers, as they respond to increasing head office pressures to build turnover.”

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The SPSL Retail Traffic Index uses systems for counting people and footfall along with customer tracking, pedestrian counting  and retail traffic counting to aid staff scheduling and improve your retail performance.