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High Street Sales Rise

Over the past few years, the business newspapers have been constantly reporting on the problems faced by Britain’s high street shops. There are many factors that have been offered as explanations for this slump in high street sales, among which the most prominent is definitely the Internet. Many new Internet only shops are emerging on the web, making shopping from the office or from your home the much more convenient and therefore attractive shopping method. Furthermore, Internet stores are also more likely to be in the position to offer lower prices, since they are spared the cost of shops leases and visual merchandising. This slow period has been prevalent for a relatively long period, yet it was aggravated even further during the summer months of 2005. Firstly, although specific only to London high street business, was the bombings that occurred during early July.

This meant that people were not only physically kept away from the high street, due to police blocks and the complete closure of some of the most popular shopping areas, but more importantly people became much more wary of travelling into the centre of London, and even further a field, simply because the terrorist threat had become so much more real. The heat wave during late August also meant that the public were far more likely to spend time at home relaxing in the garden, or taking day trips to the coast, rather than struggling through the high street in the often sweltering heat.

However, recently there has been a prominent sales rise across Britain’s high streets. This is thought to be party due to the decision by the Bank of England to cut interest rates back in August, and as was foreseen by the experts, this interest rate has only had an impact on sales in the long run, nearly four months later. At first the Bank of England was wary of reacting to the slump in consumer spending, but after much encouragement by the Retail and Consumer committees up and down the country they were forced into taking action, to try and encourage people back onto the high street and back spending. A further important factor in the recent rise in consumer spending is simply the timing of Christmas. Christmas is traditionally a time of hugely increased spending on the high street, and shops find that customers spend much more money over a much more concentrated time scale. Therefore experts are warning that the high street businesses should not become overconfident as a result of the Christmas spending boom.

High street shops have also made considerable attempts to enhance the spending of their customers this Christmas. This has meant that in many stores, the post Christmas sales have actually been brought forwards, some taking place as early as the beginning of December. This has certainly been encouraging people back into the shops, alongside additional promotions, offering further discount on purchases or even free promotional gifts. Many local councils have become involved in the struggle to encourage consumer spending, by attempting to make the shopping experience in general a lot more appealing; this has included temporary pedestrianisation of the most popular shopping areas, or even special events and guests to encourage shoppers into the stores. These factors combined have brought the high street spending on average up by 0.7% from the previous three months. After such a long term sales ‘slump’ this news was obviously well received by the high street stores up and down the country.