Retailers benefited from a rise in high street footfall on ‘Super Saturday’ when consumers undertook last-minute Christmas shopping.
The last Saturday before Christmas, December 22, saw an incremental boost in shoppers, the latest data from retail performance experts Springboard said.
High street footfall was up 1% year on year, and 6.9% ahead of the previous Saturday, according to Springboard data reported by the BBC.
However, total retail footfall was still down 0.7% versus last year. Footfall on the last Saturday before Christmas has declined every year for a decade.
Springboard insight director Diane Wehrle told the BBC: “It was a bit of a last-minute burst, but it’s not good.”
She said price cutting was hitting retailers.
Wehrle observed: “The discounting is a real issue. People are buying less and what they’re buying is at a lower price, so this is bad for retailers as they’re left with more stock and they’re selling it at a lower profit.”
She believed shoppers were spending less.
She added: “In the past year, wages didn’t increase with price rises.
“Now that has changed a bit, wage inflation is above price inflation, but the problem is consumers have had to spend a year funding that through savings, wages, loans or credit cards, so now they’re conscious they don’t want to spend too much as they have to pay back some of those loans.”
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