Figures just released suggest consumers still want to use the high street despite the surge in online retail.
Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard showed footfall rose by 1.2{06aeb1921e0b802d2bd9c766bc98fb11cc6a46c2b0593ed9c88a0e29cf417a34} in January compared to a year ago, the best performance since January 2014 – this excludes distortions created by the timing of Easter.
It was the first time there has been any increase since March last year.
These figures follow a tough Christmas for retailers when footfall fell by 2.2{06aeb1921e0b802d2bd9c766bc98fb11cc6a46c2b0593ed9c88a0e29cf417a34} in December.
An improvement was seen for high street shopping locations, which have not seen any increases – excluding Easter – since July 2013 – however, in January saw footfall rise by 0.2{06aeb1921e0b802d2bd9c766bc98fb11cc6a46c2b0593ed9c88a0e29cf417a34}.
Whilst Retail parks were flat shopping centres continued their strong growth.
Diane Wehrle, marketing and insights director at Springboard said the data showed “that bricks and mortar shopping environments are still important to consumers”.
BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson commented: “The improvement in shopper footfall witnessed in January provided a timely and welcome insentive to retailers at the start of the year.”
The data comes after BRC figures last week showed that like-for-like retail sales including stores and online rose by 2.6{06aeb1921e0b802d2bd9c766bc98fb11cc6a46c2b0593ed9c88a0e29cf417a34} in January
Source : Sky news