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BRC-SPRINGBOARD FOOTFALL MONITOR : 'THE BIG WEEKEND' - STILL TO COME | | December 19, 2012 | | 
Week commencing 10 December 2012
- Shopper numbers fell sharply in the second calendar week of December against strong comparatives a year ago which were up on 2010 when heavy snowfall hit footfall.
- On an annual basis footfall was down in all locations, falling 2.6%.
- Footfall in shopping centres reported the biggest decline, falling 4.3%, followed by out-of-town locations (-2.1%) and high streets (-2.0%).
- Footfall on a week-on-week basis increased in all locations - up 3.3% - an improvement on the previous week.
- Shopping centres saw the biggest boost to footfall week-on-week, up by 5.7%.
- Footfall in out-of-town locations was up on last week by 4.0%, while high street shopper numbers performed more modestly, rising by 2.0%.
Week commencing 3 December 2012
- Footfall was down in all locations on an annual basis, falling 1.7%.
- Footfall in shopping centres saw the biggest fall, decreasing 4.9%, followed by high streets and out-of-town locations which fell 0.8% and 0.4% respectively.
- Footfall on a week-on-week basis increased in all locations, up 2.3%.
- Footfall in shopping centres saw the biggest rise in footfall, up 3.6% on the previous week, followed by high streets (2.2%) and out-of-town locations (0.9%).
Helen Dickinson, British Retail Consortium Director General, said: "At first glance the year-on-year fall in shopper numbers doesn't look great but there are several factors at play. Online shopping will be more important this Christmas than ever before and with Christmas falling on a Tuesday this year many of us feel that we have a few more days to finalise our festive shopping.
"The good news is, shopper numbers went up by 3.3 per cent last week compared with the previous week, showing that momentum continues to build as we move into the final week before Christmas. It's not a massive leap in shopper numbers, but this weekend is ‘the big one'. We're predicting a last-minute rush which means it's all still to play for in terms of how Christmas trading ends up overall."
Diane Wehrle, Research Director at Springboard, said: "Footfall across all formats declined annually last week, continuing the trend recorded since mid-November. This is symptomatic of the pressures on the retail sector this Christmas. However, the upside for high streets and retail parks is that they have recorded smaller annual declines than shopping centres. On the previous week shopping centres and retail parks were the clear winners in attracting shoppers - in shopping centres the increase in footfall was nearly twice that recorded in the previous week, and in retail parks activity rose on a weekly basis for the first time. Footfall in high streets increased by 2 per cent last week, tailing off a little from an increase of 2.2 per cent the week before. This suggests that shoppers might be holding off for a last minute surge to take advantage of discounts and added value offers in the final days."
Notes to editors
Footfall Measure
The BRC-Springboard Retail Footfall Monitor gathers data on customer activity in town and city centre locations, and in out of town shopping locations, throughout the UK using the latest generation automated technology. The Monitor records approximately 62 million footfall counts per week at over 500 different shopping locations in 152 towns and cities across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The Monitor covers the main centre in each nation/region and a representative sample of secondary and smaller town centres.
The Monitor provides the only available measures of the performance of town centre and out of town shopping locations in the UK.
*Figures in the Monitor are weighted by an estimate of footfall by channel (high streets, out of town and shopping centres).
Media Enquiries
Richard Dodd
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