Seven sleeps. This time next week “he” will have been. Assuming you’ve been good…
Our second blog this week provides the UK consumer perspective of which retailers are going to have themselves a merry Christmas (and which retailers will not be feeling the Christmas cheer).
A clear Christmas winner – Amazon
Of the 27 retailer brands included in our survey we have a clear and unanimous winner – Amazon. More than half (54%) selected Amazon in their top 5 companies expected to have a good Christmas. Amazon is becoming a default choice for many UK households’ gift shopping (and, increasingly, their food shopping), and despite negative press around worker discontent and Lesley Smith’s grilling by the Parliament’s Communities Committee yesterday, UK consumers believe Amazon is set for a bumper festive period.
Good news for grocery retail
On the whole, consumers believe there is also good tidings in store for the grocery retail sector, with Aldi, ASDA, Tesco, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Iceland and Morrisons all featuring in the top 10. Iceland’s inclusion is particularly interesting, perhaps due to their strong association with party food, as well as recent positive coverage regarding Palm Oil.
There are notable exceptions, however, with the Cooperative expected to have a poor Christmas (16% think this), and more people expecting Waitrose to have a poor Christmas (12%) than a good Christmas (10%).
More bad news for the big department stores
Given recent coverage, perhaps it is not surprising to see House of Fraser bottom of the pile, with many more people expecting this business to have a bad Christmas (36%) than a good Christmas (just 2%). Debenhams also has a negative “net score” (28% bad Christmas, 6% good Christmas).
So often synonymous with Christmas in recent years, the results are also mixed for John Lewis – more people say they expect this business to have a bad Christmas (18%) than expect it to have a good Christmas (17%).
It is a mixed story for M&S too – 17% said they expect M&S to have a good Christmas (and 17% also expect the Simply Food brand to have a good Christmas) – but 16% and 9% respectively expect these to have a bad Christmas.
Of the other notable brands in our rankings that offer both clothing and homewares, it is better news for Primark (net score +12), and relatively bad news for Matalan (-6) and Next (-6).
