[Infographic] High-Street Retail Sector Exposed in New Survey

A new survey has revealed some surprising findings on the high-street retail sector. The survey, which was conducted by pop up stand supplier Display Wizard, questioned retail businesses of between 1 – 25 employees on the ups and downs of running their business.

Mainly focusing on independent stores as well as cafés, restaurants and bars, business owners were quizzed on a selection of topics from their most effective form of advertising to the biggest threats to their business. The results were compiled into the infographic below, which contains some truly surprising insights into the industry.

Retail Businesses Need to Embrace In-Store Promotions to Compete with Internet Prices

One of the key findings in the report was on the importance of in-store promotions, with many small retail businesses explaining how promotions help them to compete with online retailers. A number of business owners had promotions running almost constantly throughout the year, with a combined 38% of respondents running promotions between 5 and 20 times a year.

In terms of the most important event for running in-store promotions, Christmas was still - by an extremely high margin - the most important sales opportunity. 72% of respondents declared that Christmas was the biggest sales opportunity in their annual calendar, with the closest challenger being the Summer Holidays with just 12% of the vote.

 

Print Advertising Still Important for Small Retail Businesses

As many retail businesses focus their marketing budget on online channels such as social media, it’s clear that many will forget about traditional promotional channels such as printed advertising.

Whether it’s a poster in your window or sign outside your store, printed advertising is a low-cost form of advertising and still has an important role to play for small retail businesses as uncovered in the survey.

The report found that 62% of small retail business owners found that printed advertising was one of the most effective advertising methods for them. This was followed by another traditional form of advertising – word of mouth – with 53% of business owners stating this as one of the most effective methods. Contrast this to the most effective online form of advertising – social media – which just 26% of small retail business owners rated as one of the most effective methods.

 

Lots of Positives for Retail Businesses

Although there is lots of doom and gloom around the retail sector due to the shift to online competition and increased rental costs, many retail business owners put a positive spin on their experiences with 55% of respondents giving a positive outlook for their business.

One of the questions in the survey asked business owners to give some advantages for customers coming to shop in-store rather than online and there were some interesting findings. The ‘ability to sample goods’ was seen as the biggest advantage with 60% of respondents stating this as important to the customer experience.

The ability to sample goods is an extremely important part of the shopping experience, particularly for fashion retailers, and this was listed amongst other advantages such as ‘no delivery costs’; ‘greater focus on quality’ and the ability to ‘speak to retail experts’. Due to these reasons, it’s clear that despite lots of media hype about the decline of physical stores, there still remains an important place for them in the retail world.

The full results can be seen in the infographic below:

retail sector infographic

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