Retail sales, Great Britain: December 2015

A first estimate of retail sales in volume and value terms, seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted.

Nid hwn yw'r datganiad diweddaraf. Gweld y datganiad diweddaraf

This is an accredited National Statistic. Click for information about types of official statistics.

Cyswllt:
Email Melanie Richard

Dyddiad y datganiad:
22 January 2016

Cyhoeddiad nesaf:
19 February 2016

1. Main points

  • Year-on-year estimates of the quantity bought in the retail industry showed growth for the 32nd consecutive month in December 2015, increasing by 2.6% compared with December 2014

  • The underlying pattern in the data, as suggested by the 3 month on 3 month movement in the quantity bought, showed growth for the 24th consecutive month, increasing by 1.1%

  • Compared with November 2015, the quantity bought in the retail industry is estimated to have decreased by 1.0%

  • When comparing the 2015 annual data with 2014, the quantity bought in the retail industry was estimated to have increased by 4.5%

  • Average store prices (including petrol stations) fell by 3.2% in December 2015 compared with December 2014, the 18th consecutive month of year-on-year price falls

  • The amount spent in the retail industry decreased by 1.0% in December 2015 compared with December 2014 and decreased by 1.4% compared with November 2015

  • The value of online sales increased by 8.2% in December 2015 compared with December 2014 and decreased by 5.2% compared with November 2015

  • Revisions to this release were caused by the incorporation of late data. The earliest revisions point for current price, non-seasonally adjusted data was December 2014. More information on revisions can be found in the background notes

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2. About this release

This bulletin presents estimates of the quantity bought (volume) and amount spent (value) in the retail industry for the period 29 November 2015 to 2 January 2016. Unless otherwise stated, the estimates in this release are seasonally adjusted. Estimates for December 2015 did not include “Black Friday”, however, “Cyber Monday” was included this reporting period. These events occurred in the corresponding reporting periods in 2014.

The estimates in this release are based on a monthly survey of 5,000 retailers, including all large retailers employing 100 people or more and those with annual turnover of greater than £60 million who employ 10 to 99 people. It is estimated that this survey covers approximately 95% of all known retail turnover in Great Britain.

The quality of the estimate of retail sales

Retail sales estimates are produced from the monthly business survey – Retail Sales Inquiry (RSI). The timeliness of these retail sales estimates, which are published just 3 weeks after the end of each month, makes them an important early economic indicator. The industry as a whole is used as an indicator of how the wider economy is performing and the strength of consumer spending. Results are revised for the previous 13 published periods. More information about the data content for this release can be found in the background notes.

Revisions are an inevitable consequence of the trade-off between timeliness and accuracy. The response rate in December 2015 was 66.4% of questionnaires, accounting for 83.7% of registered turnover in the retail industry. Therefore, the estimate is subject to revisions as more data become available.

All estimates, by definition, are subject to statistical uncertainty and for the retail sales index we publish the standard error associated with the non-seasonally adjusted estimates of year-on-year and month-on-month growth in the quantity bought as a measure of accuracy. More information on these standard errors can be found in the background notes and in the quality tables (169 Kb Excel sheet) of this release.

We are continually working on methodological changes to improve the accuracy of the retail sales estimates; progress on these can be found on the continuous improvement page.

The reference tables offer different ways to access the data, they include:

  • non-seasonally adjusted and seasonally adjusted volume and value indexes by industry

  • year-on-year and month-on-month growth rates by industry

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3. Main figures

At a glance

In December 2015:

the quantity bought in the retail industry (volume):

  • increased by 2.6% compared with December 2014

  • decreased by 1.0% compared with November 2015

the amount spent (value):

  • decreased by 1.0% compared with December 2014

  • decreased by 1.4% compared with November 2015

Non-seasonally adjusted data show that the prices of goods sold in the retail industry (as measured by the implied price deflator) decreased by 3.2%.

More information on how the implied price deflator and other estimates in this release are calculated, can be found in section 3 of the background notes.

Amount spent in the retail industry

In the 5 week reporting period during December 2015, the amount spent in the retail industry was £44.8 billion (non-seasonally adjusted).

This compares with:

  • £32.1 billion in the 4 week reporting period for November 2015

  • £45.1 billion in the 5 week reporting period for December 2014

This equates to an average weekly spend of:

  • £9.0 billion in December 2015, compared with

  • £8.0 billion in November 2015

  • £9.0 billion in December 2014

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4. Sector summary

Main points:

In December 2015:

  • all main store types, except predominantly non-food stores showed increases in the quantity bought compared with December 2014

  • all main store types except predominantly food stores and non-store retailing showed decreases in the amount spent year-on-year

  • all store types saw falls in average store price compared with December 2014

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5. Impact of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” on department stores in November and December 2015

There were several store types where the effect of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” had an impact on sales in both November and December 2015, in particular, department stores (non-specialised stores).

Tables 3 and 4 provide a summary of the growth rates of the quantity bought and amount spent in department stores in November and December for the past 2 years.

In November 2014, there was strong growth in the quantity bought and amount spent in department stores compared with November 2013, while December 2014 saw weaker growth compared with December 2013. This was as a result of “Black Friday” deals in the November 2014 reporting period. The month-on-month picture was similar with growth in November 2014 compared with October 2014 while December 2014 reported falls as consumers had already made significant purchases in November 2014 taking advantage of “Black Friday” offers.

We have seen a slightly different spending pattern in department stores in 2015 where higher year-on-year growth has been reported in December 2015 compared with December 2014. This suggests that the pattern of spending has changed between 2014 and 2015 as department stores moved from a one-day “Black Friday” event to week-long events including “Cyber Monday” and therefore spending was more spread out over the 2 months.

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6. Internet sales in detail

Seasonally adjusted internet sales data are published in the RSI Internet tables and include:

  • a seasonally adjusted value index

  • year-on-year and month-on-month growth rates

Internet sales are estimates of how much was spent online through retailers across all store types in Great Britain. The reference year is 2012=100.

Main points:

  • average weekly spending online in December 2015 was £837.2 million; this was an increase of 8.2% compared with December 2014

  • the amount spent online in December 2015 in non-store retailing increased by 3.6% compared with December 2014; this is the lowest since November 2012 (1.6%)

  • the amount spent online accounted for 12.8% of all retail spending, excluding automotive fuel, compared with 11.8% in December 2014

Table 5 shows the year-on-year growth rates for total Internet sales by sector and the proportion of sales made online in each retail sector.

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7. Contributions to growth

The retail industry is divided into 4 retail sectors:

  • predominantly food stores (for example, supermarkets, specialist food stores and sales of alcoholic drinks and tobacco)

  • predominantly non-food stores (for example, non-specialised stores, such as department stores, textiles, clothing and footwear, household goods and other stores)

  • non-store retailing (for example, mail order, catalogues and market stalls)

  • stores selling automotive fuel (petrol stations)

In December 2015, for every pound spent in the retail industry:

  • 41 pence was spent in food stores

  • 42 pence in non-food stores

  • 7 pence in non-store retailing

  • 10 pence in stores selling automotive fuel

Using these as weights, along with the year-on-year growth rates, we can calculate how each sector contributed to the total year-on-year growth in the quantity bought.

Figures 1 and 2 show the contribution of each sector to the quantity bought (volume) and amount spent (value) in the retail industry between December 2015 and December 2014.

In December 2015, 3 out of the 4 main retail sectors saw an increase in the quantity bought (volume). The largest contribution came from the food stores sector.

In December 2015, 2 out of the 4 main sectors (non-food stores and petrol stations) contributed to the decrease in amount spent (value). The largest downward contribution came from the non-food stores sector.

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8. Distribution analysis

Table 6 shows how sales varied among different-sized retailers. It shows the distribution of reported change in sales values of businesses (from the RSI sample), ranked by size of business (based on number of employees). Businesses with 40 to 99 employees saw the largest growth in the amount spent in December 2015 compared with December 2014 (23.7%). Businesses with 100 and over employees showed a decrease of 0.1%.

More information on the performance of the retail industry by store type and size can be found in the Business Analysis reference table (26.5 Kb Excel sheet).

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9. Economic context

Figure 3 compares a rolling 3 month period with the same period in the previous year and highlights that retail sales started to grow strongly from mid-2013. Throughout most of 2015, the retail sales growth rate has fluctuated around the 4.0% to 5.0% range, which is higher than just before the downturn. However, the latest data shows an easing in retail sales growth to 3.7% in the 3 months to December 2015, the lowest rate for 2015, when compared with growth of 5.1% in the 3 months to November 2015.

Three distinct periods emerge from Figure 3. Between December 2006 and July 2008, retail sales volumes were experiencing continuous growth, although to a different degree, with the volume of sales increasing by 0.9% over the period as a whole. Growth in inflation (Consumer Prices Index CPI) was lower than average weekly earnings over most of this period; which resulted in rising real earnings, an indicator of the purchasing power of consumers. Moreover, between December 2006 and July 2008 consumer credit1 increased by 8.8% which may have been a factor driving retail sales growth.

However, between August 2008 and May 2013, the volume of retail sales fluctuated between periods of contraction and expansion and as a result, broadly the same volume of sales were recorded towards the beginning and end of the period. This weakness may be partly explained by the economic climate over this period which coincided with a reduction in consumer credit of 24.8% between August 2008 and May 2013. Moreover, growth in average weekly earnings was lower than inflation over most of the period, which implies that earnings fell in real terms.

The third period shown in Figure 3 started in June 2013, when growth in volume terms began to increase notably, despite average weekly earnings growing at a slower rate than CPI until September 2014. Moreover, since June 2013, consumer credit has followed a broadly upward trend, growing by 13.8% between June 2013 and November 2015. In mid-2013, prices in retail outlets began to fall and this accelerated throughout most of 2014 and 2015, coinciding with higher growth in the volume of retail sales over this period. In addition, this upturn in spending has been accompanied by a decline in the savings ratio, from an average of 9.0% over the period 2008 to 2012, to an average of 5.9% over the period 2013 to 2014.

Figure 4 shows that growth in the volume of all retail sales excluding fuel in the year to December 2015 (dark blue bars) was lower than compound average month on year growth prior to the downturn (light blue bars), however, this masked a wide variation in the relative performances of the different store types. In December 2015, growth in the volume of retail sales in predominantly food stores, household goods stores, non-specialised stores (department stores) and non-store retailing was significantly higher than prior to the downturn (by 0.8, 1.4, 7.4 and 9.2 percentage points, respectively). However, growth in the volume of retail sales in other non-food stores and textile, clothing and footwear stores was significantly lower than pre-downturn growth rates (by 11.1 and 10.1 percentage points, respectively). This may suggest that there has been a change in consumer spending patterns in December 2015 compared with prior to the downturn, with spending mainly being reallocated from textile, clothing and footwear stores and other non-food stores towards department stores and non-store retailing.

Notes for economic context

  1. Consumer credit stands for monthly amounts outstanding of total (excluding the Students Loans Company) sterling net unsecured lending to individuals (Table A5.2).
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10. International data

The only international estimate of retail sales available for December 2015 was published by the US Census Bureau on 15 January 2016. In its advanced retail sales estimates for December 2015, the amount spent in the US retail industry, including motor vehicles and parts and food services, decreased by 0.1% from the previous month and increased by 2.2% compared with November 2014. Total sales for the 3 months to November 2015 were up 1.8% from the same period a year ago.

The latest estimates of the volume of retail trade across the European Union, from Eurostat for November 2015, show the seasonally adjusted volume of retail trade decreased by 0.3% in the euro area (EA19) and increased by 0.2% in the EU28 when compared with October 2015. Compared with November 2014, the retail sales index increased by 1.4% in the EA19 and by 2.6% in the EU28. Note that an accurate comparison cannot be made as Eurostat data are calculated on a 2010 = 100 basis, while data for Great Britain are calculated on a 2012 = 100 basis.

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11 .Background notes

  1. Future improvements

    We are introducing new Consumer Prices Index (CPI) deflator weights due to the rebasing of CPI to 2015 = 100 in the January 2016 estimates, published on 19 February 2016. More information on the changes can be found on our website.

    As described in Improving the Coverage of the Standard Business Survey Population (150.9 Kb Pdf) published on 21 December 2015, the coverage of our Standard Business Survey Population has been extended to include a population of solely PAYE based businesses.

  2. Understanding the data

    i. Quick Guide to the Retail Sales Index (195 Kb Pdf)

    ii. Interpreting the data

    • The Retail Sales Index (RSI) is derived from a monthly survey of 5,000 businesses in Great Britain. The sample represents the whole retail sector and includes the 900 largest retailers and a representative panel of smaller businesses. Collectively all of these businesses cover approximately 90% of the retail industry in terms of turnover.
    • The RSI covers sales only from businesses classified as retailers according to the Standard Industrial Classification 2007 (SIC 2007), consistent with the international NACE Rev 2 classification of industries. The retail industry is division 47 of the SIC 2007 and retailing is defined as the sale of goods to the general public for household consumption. Consequently, the RSI includes all internet businesses whose primary function is retailing and also covers internet sales by other British retailers, such as online sales by supermarkets, department stores and catalogue companies. The RSI does not cover household spending on services bought from the retail industry as it is designed to only cover goods. Respondents are asked to separate out the non-goods elements of their sales, for example, income from cafes. Consequently, online sales of services by retailers, such as car insurance, are also excluded.
    • The monthly survey collects 2 figures from each sampled business: the total turnover for retail sales for the standard trading period, and a separate figure for internet sales. The total turnover will include internet sales. The separation of the internet sales figure allows an estimate relating to internet sales to be calculated.

    iii. Definitions and explanations

    • The "value" or current price series records the growth of the value of sales “through the till” before any adjustment for the effects of price changes.
    • The "volume" or constant price series are created by removing the effect of price changes from the value series. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is the main source of the information required on price changes. In brief, a deflator for each type of store (5-digit SIC) is derived by weighting together the CPI components for the appropriate commodities, the weights being based on the pattern of sales in the base year. These deflators are then applied to the value data to produce volume series.
    • The "implied deflator" or the "estimated price of goods" is derived by dividing the non-seasonally adjusted value and volume data to leave a price relative. In general, this implied price deflator should be quite close to the retail component of the CPI. More information on the implied price deflator can be found in the Quick Guide to Retail Sales (167.6 Kb Pdf).

    iv. Use of the data

    The value and volume measures of retail sales estimates are widely used in private and public sector organisations, both domestically and internationally. For example, private sector institutions such as investment banks, the retail industry itself and retail groups use the data to inform decisions on the current economic performance of the retail industry. These organisations are most interested in a long-term view of the retail sector, taken from the year-on-year growth rates. Public sector institutions use the data to help inform decision and policy making. They tend to be most interested in a snapshot view of the retail industry, which is taken from the month-on-month growth rates.

    In a recent survey users found the Retail Sales Index statistics important to their work. It was found crucial for financial modelling of sectors and recognised as a timely indicator for the economy. It has been used as a comparative tool with BRC and other market sources to boost context. Practically, it has been utilised as a comparative tool for business performance and the ability to access internet retail sales has been particularly beneficial to some. On a non-industry level, the RSI was perceived as important for informing political opinions or simply for curiosity by individuals who were not necessarily utilising it as a reference for work purposes.

    The Retail Sales Index feeds into estimates of GDP in 2 ways. Firstly, it feeds into the services industries when GDP is measured from the output approach. Secondly, it is a data source used to measure household final consumption expenditure, which feeds into GDP estimates when measured from the expenditure approach.

    The data feed into the first (or preliminary) estimate of GDP, the second estimate of GDP and the third estimate, published in the Quarterly national accounts.

  3. Methods

    Information on retail sales methodology is available on our website.

    i. Composition of the data

    Retail sales estimates are based on financial data collected through the monthly Retail Sales Inquiry. Response rates at the time of publication are included for the current month, and the 3 months prior. The response rates for those historical periods are updated to reflect the current level of response, incorporating data from late returns. There are 2 response rates included with 1 percentage for the amount of turnover returned, and the other percentage for the amount of questionnaire forms. Historical response rates are available in the quality information reference table.

    ii. Seasonal adjustment

    Seasonally adjusted estimates are derived by estimating and removing calendar effects (for example, Easter moving between March and May) and seasonal effects (for example, increased spending in January as a result of Christmas) from the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) estimates. Seasonal adjustment is performed each month and reviewed each year, using the standard, widely used software, X-13-ARIMA-SEATS. Before adjusting for seasonality, prior adjustments are made for calendar effects (where statistically significant), such as returns that do not comply with the standard trading period (there is more information in the Methods, Calendar effects section), bank holidays, Easter and the day of the week on which Christmas occurs.

    The data collected from the retail sales survey estimate the amount of money taken through the tills of retailers; these are non-seasonally adjusted data. These data consist of 3 components:

    • trend which describes long-term or underlying movements within the data
    • seasonal which describes regular variation around the trend, that is, peaks and troughs within the time series (the most obvious is the peak in January and the fall in February)
    • irregular or “noise”, for example, deeper falls within the non-seasonally adjusted series due to bad weather impacting on retail sales

    To ease interpretation of the underlying movements in the data, the seasonal adjustment process estimates and removes the seasonal component. It leaves a seasonally adjusted time series made up of the trend and irregular components.

    In the non-seasonally adjusted RSI we see large rises in January each year and a fall in the following February, but these are not evident in the seasonally adjusted index. This peak in January is larger than the subsequent fall, but the trend and irregular components in both months are likely to be similar. This means that the movements in the unadjusted series are almost completely a result of the seasonal pattern.

  4. Quality

    i. Basic quality information

    • The standard reporting periods can change over time due to the movement of the calendar. Every 5 or 6 years the standard reporting periods are brought back into line by adding an extra week. For example, January is typically a 4 week standard period but January 1986, 1991, 1996, 2002, 2008 and 2014 were all 5 week standard periods. The non-seasonally adjusted estimates will still contain calendar effects. If the non-seasonally adjusted estimates are used for analysis, this can lead to a distortion depending on the timing of the standard reporting period in relation to the calendar, previous reporting periods and how trading activity changes over time.
    • The non-seasonally adjusted series contain elements relating to the impact of the standard reporting period, moving seasonality and trading day activity. When making comparisons, you should focus on the seasonally adjusted estimates as these have the systematic calendar-related component removed. Due to the volatility of the monthly data, growth rates should be calculated using an average of the latest 3 months of the seasonally adjusted estimates.
    • When interpreting the data, the relative weighted contributions of the sectors in the all retailing series should be considered. Based on SIC 2007 data, total retail sales consists of: predominantly food stores 40.9%, predominantly non-food stores 42.0%, non-store retailing 7.0% and automotive fuel 10.1%.

    ii. Standard error

    • Standard errors determine the spread of possible movements and are a means of assessing the accuracy of the non-seasonally adjusted month-on-month and year-on-year estimates of all retail sales volumes. The lower the standard error, the more confident we can be that the estimate is close to the true value for the retail population.
    • The standard error of year-on-year movement for “All Retailing” is 1.0%. This has remained relatively stable having been at this level since June 2015, except for one month. Before this period, and in September 2015, the year-on-year movements mostly remained at 0.9%. The lowest figure was seen in May 2015, with a value of 0.8%.
    • Table 8 shows the year-on-year movement for the non-seasonally adjusted chained volume measure alongside the standard error, across the published sector breakdowns for December 2014 and December 2015. The differences between December 2014 and December 2015 highlight that the standard error has decreased the most in “Textiles, clothing and footwear stores”. The greatest increases are for "Household goods stores" and "Other stores".
    • More information on standard errors can be found in the “Retail Sales Quality Tables” reference tables, which are part of this release.

    iii. Summary quality report

    The RSI Quality and Methodology Information paper (245.6 Kb Pdf) details the intended uses of the statistics in this bulletin, their general quality and the methods used to produce them.

    iv. Revisions triangles

    Revisions to data provide one indication of the reliability of main indicators. Table 9 shows summary information on the size and direction of the revisions made to the volume data covering a 5 year period. Note that changes in definition and classification mean that the revisions analysis is not conceptually the same over time.

    The data section of this bulletin provides these estimates and the calculations behind the averages in the table.

  5. Relevant links

    A subset of the retail sales dataset will be published on our Data Explorer page. Please note the link will not work until the data are published.

    Disclosure control policy (337 Kb Word document)

    Comparability of RSI Sales and External Indicators (95.5 Kb Pdf)

    RSI Workplan (87.3 Kb Pdf)

    RSI Quality and Methodology Information paper (245.6 Kb Pdf)

    Revisions to the Retail Sales Index (100 Kb Pdf)

    Has 2014 been a good year for retailers

    BRC Sales Monitor December 2015

    International Measures of Retail Sales

    National Accounts Workplan (410 Kb Powerpoint presentation)

    Why is the retail sales revisions policy different from the National Accounts revisions policy? (53.9 Kb Pdf)

    Impact of quarterly employment question on the monthly survey response (163.7 Kb Pdf)

    Investigating the effect of quarterly collection of employee jobs data on the estimated standard error of change for total turnover on the Monthly Business Survey (110 Kb Pdf)

    Government Statistical Service (GSS) uncertainty guidance

  6. Publication policy

    Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available from our Media Relations Office.

    Also available is a list of the organisations given pre-publication access to the contents of this bulletin.

  7. Accessing data

    The complete run of data in the tables of this statistical bulletin is available to view and download in electronic format using our Time Series Data service. Users can download the complete bulletin in a choice of zipped formats, or view and download their own sections of individual series.

    Alternatively, for low-cost tailored data call 0845 601 3034 or email info@ons.gov.uk

    Next publication: Friday 19 February 2016

    Issued by:

    Office for National Statistics
    Government Buildings
    Cardiff Road
    Newport
    NP10 8XG

    Media contact:

    Tel Media Relations Office 0845 6041858
    Emergency on-call 07867 906553
    Email media.relations@ons.gov.uk

    Statistical contact:

    Tel Melanie Richard +44 (0)1633 455602
    Email retail.sales.enquiries@ons.gov.uk

    Contact us:

    Tel 0845 601 3034
    Email info@ons.gov.uk

    Website

    Twitter

  8. Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available by visiting www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/index.html or from the Media Relations Office email: media.relations@ons.gov.uk

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12 . Methodology

Manylion cyswllt ar gyfer y Bwletin ystadegol

Melanie Richard
retail.sales.enquiries@ons.gov.uk
Ffôn: +44 (0)1633 455602