End of the worst?
It's time for another caveat-laden sliver of positive news again. This time it concerns footfall at the UK's beleaguered retailers.
Synovate, which collates data from UK retailers to make the Retail Traffic Index, has revealed that retail footfall this March was only down 0.2 percent on March 2008. Furthermore, it was 4.2 percent higher than February this year, but maybe that's just down to the extra three days.
It doesn't look like March '08 was that great though, with the weather being rubbish and the sub-prime mess already apparent. For the whole of Q1, 2009 figures were down 2.6 percent year-on-year. Q4 '08 figures were down 3.3 percent on the previous year.
"We shouldn't over-egg the significance of one month's figures, nor should we be over-surprised that shoppers were out and about in greater numbers after a very cold and financially depressing winter. Human nature being what it is, they were bound to savour the first rays of spring sun," said Synovate retail psychologist Dr Tim Denison.
"We might be approaching the end of the worst of the downturn and that alone should give the retail industry a whiff of a reason to be more optimistic about the future. Our prediction is that we can expect the shops to be busier still in April with the first y-on-y growth (+0.7% for the full month) in shopper numbers since August 2008."
So there are some grounds for optimism there, but Denison warned that, while footfall numbers are holding up, that doesn't necessarily mean people are buying stuff. "There is a sense that shoppers have raised their due diligence standards, making more store trips and product/price comparisons before settling on a purchase," he said.
