It’s ironic that while Christmas decorations come into stores earlier every year, customers are leaving their spending even later.

It’s ironic that while Christmas decorations come into stores earlier every year, customers are leaving their spending even later. Just a month today it’ll be Boxing Day and the Sales will be in full swing - or at least as swinging as the Sunday Trading laws will allow - yet the festive mood hasn’t gripped shoppers yet.

The trend of people leaving their festive spending later every year is continuing, and that will mean a white knuckle ride for a lot of retailers as the pressure to discount ahead of Christmas mounts.

In the end shoppers will come and out and spend, as they always do for Christmas. But there’s no doubt that the recovery in consumer confidence has looked shakier following the government’s austerity plans.

Nervous shoppers mean retailers are going to have to work that much harder to get customers through the door. As well as providing excellent service and a real experience in store, the need to demonstrate genuine value will be greater than ever.

It will be a competitive Christmas, but nothing like two years ago when the banking crisis came right in the run-up to the festive season. But even then, the best retailers still gained market share while several of the weaker players, most notably Woolworths, fell by the wayside.

This year will not be as brutal as that, and if there are retail casualties in January they are likely to be small both in number and size. But that’s not to say Christmas 2010 isn’t going to be critical for many retailers. With a tough start to 2011 on the cards, store groups will need to enter the year in top shape if they’re not going to struggle.

Multichannel Now

Anyone working in retail and anyone reading Retail Week will know that the multichannel revolution is transforming retail in ways no one could have predicted even five years ago. The scale and speed of the changes are set out very clearly in Multichannel Now, the comprehensive new report published by Retail Week, which gives the most in-depth and authoritative analysis yet produced on multichannel retailing in the UK.

No one working in retail today can afford not to be on top of the impact new channels are having, and on how the UK’s top retailers are reacting to them, which is why the report is a must-read. Turn to page 44 to find out how to get hold of it.

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