Home › IMRG Blog › Online retail news in brief (06 December 2017)
By IMRG
In case you missed them, we’ve pulled together a few online retail news highlights from around the web this week.
Here are some of the latest stories in online retail.
The New West End Company has reported that retail will benefit from the royal wedding and media attention on Meghan Markle.
Chief executive Jace Tyrrell predicts a £60m retail boost.
Back in 2015, The Duchess of Cambridge is thought to have been responsible for £150m worth of extra sales by having been photographed in various items and outfits. Already, Markle has apparently helped to stimulate £20,000 worth of Finlay & Co. glasses sales after wearing a pair at the Invictus Games.
Troubled toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us is set to shut at least 26 stores in the UK.
Back in September, Toys ‘R’ Us filed for bankruptcy in the US, but stated that European operations wouldn’t be affected. In October, two suppliers halted deliveries to Toys ‘R’ Us.
November saw a 4.5% month-on-month growth in retail footfall, according to the Retail Traffic Index. Year-on-year (YoY), store visits on Black Friday itself were up 0.9%.
The boost may be partially due to a poor October, when footfall fell by 2%.
By contrast with the country as a whole, London and the South East suffered a 10.5% YoY drop.
Busy as the shops are reported to have been in some parts…
The three months to November saw a -3.7% like-for-like decline, according to the Retail Sales Monitor from KPMG and BRC.
BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson: “Food sales were responsible for pretty much all the growth this month as higher prices continue to absorb more of the weekly shopping budget. Non-food sales – the focus of Black Friday – fell, as the squeeze on household incomes continues to impact discretionary spend.”
For the figures on where UK shoppers did spend their money, read the IMRG Black Friday results.
Amazon’s Treasure truck is due to visit London and Manchester. Several times a month, the truck will bring limited stocks for selected deals. Shoppers will order through the Amazon app and pick up their items from the truck.
The Truck already operates in the US, where it launched in Amazon’s native Seattle.
YouTube has released it figures on its top ten most viewed Christmas adverts in 2017 so far. The winners are:
Retail Week has also published an alternative ranking, measuring viewer ratings.
But another player has just joined the Christmas ad game…
Poundland’s Christmas ad takes a deliberately different approach from its rivals, wishing to assert the virtue of the vox populi over big budget CGI.
The ad involves two Poundland advocates asking people how much they think various gifts and items cost, then revealing that they’re actually one pound.
Reality TV show ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ is set to celebrate 100 years since a famous moment of female emancipation – when suffragettes won the right to vote for women over 30 – by imprisoning several women in a house.
Dr Helen Pankhurst said that her grandmother, Sylvia Pankhurst, and great-grandmother Emmeline Pankhurst, would laugh at the idea, and said “I don’t know what they would make of the world we live in.”
Questionable juxtaposition from the BBC: Big Brother Host Emma Willis and Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst
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