UK Retail Sector Trends and Impact on Business

The report explores the current trends in the retail sector of the UK market, including e-commerce growth, consumer spending, and channel shift. It analyzes how these trends are affecting business operations and provides recommendations for future success. The report also discusses the impact of Brexit on the retail sector and how businesses can adapt to this changing landscape.

Inquiry Project

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
RETAIL TRENDS...........................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Retail sector is one of the biggest sector in every nation's economy. This is because of
increased constituents into the market and continuous increment in customer base. This brief
project will be cover on current trends running into the retail sector and getting recommendation
for how to business can continue its success for longer period of time (Dmitrović, 2015).
RETAIL TRENDS
In the retail business, continuous flow of trends has become frequent, because of change
of customer attitude and their change in an income level, taste & preferences towards any
specific products or services (Hortaçsu, 2015). For an analysis of retail trends, Marks & Spencer
has been taken to discuss what trends are currently running in a specific retail market and what
will its impact on business operation of the Marks & Spencer. Such kind of industry analysis will
be undertaken to ensure future success for the retail firm. Marks & Spencer, which is British
multinational leader headquartered in Westminster, United Kingdom.
Literature search and Industry data
In UK, retail remains single largest private sector with sales totalling a staggering £358bn
and market share has been raised to 2.3 percent in comparison to 2017. British retail platform has
been dominated by retail units such as Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Morrisons etc. which has
grab the retail market on larger basis. This will be possible through secondary research technique
to ascertain trends from various sources such as books, business journals, outlook magazine etc.
Out of the major seven competitor's, these three hold sum of 48 percent market share. Along
with this, new market entrant has put down various impact such as acquiring existing customer's
of players, price fluctuation, product diversification etc. There are various trends in the retail
sector for UK market are as follows:
Making e-commerce shipping faster: In the retail sector, e-commerce continuous its
flow towards most popular shopping medium across the globe. In September 2018. retail sector
of UK has been expanded by 11.4 percent in response to 2016 (Lamba, 2017). Out of which, 6.7
percent market share has been captured by e-commerce platform, this reveals that e-commerce in
retail sector will be turning point in an entire UK.

Consumer spending: Major interference of Brexit have impacts consumer's spending as a
result of flow currency and inflow of goods from other nation. This has been raised price of item
and ultimately impacts over customer's spending ability and lower down potential to spend. Also,
spending of customer's has been varied in different retail sector such as groceries, health, beauty,
clothing, tech etc. This will be explained through given diagram:
Sources: Flux in customer spending in different retail sector, 2019
Multi channel is the new normal: In retail market, brick and mortar stores would play
necessary role to empower the sales of retail products. In addition to this, e-commerce has been
diversified the distribution of retail products to the customer's. Marks & Spencer still following
traditional product selling, which has slower their business operation (Allouhi and et. al., 2015).
To gain success, online selling will be suitable to implement. The major reason behind shifting to
online platform is role of increasing artificial intelligence and era of internet.
Marks & Spencer which deals in selling clothing, home products, provides assistance for
groceries and luxury food products. From last few years, they have setup their online platform to
access their products to customer at the ease time. This has not been happened because of lack of
either complete knowledge, the way to deal with online segment and regulate & continue high
operation in the same sector.
Illustration 1: Flux in customer spending in different retail sector

There are various shortcoming which has been noticed in UK retail sector are as follows:
Channel shift: At the end of December, 2018 Marks & Spencer has noticed 20 percent of
total sales. Although majority of sales takes place in-store, which is less as compared till year
2016. In current time, online market is overtaking in-store style at larger context, because of
wide range of customer choice and distribution channel has been raised.
Costs are increasing: Overall processing cost is rising in retail sector of UK. This is
because of Brexit which has took place and also which has been led turn out of people to other
location to locate or operate their business entities.

CONCLUSION
From this brief project, it has been concluded that current trends in retail sector is helpful
to get action planning on recovery of business at the higher level. Customer's income level and
online retail platform has been identified as growing trends for retail business and market. Action
planning is necessary to continue success for retail sector for economy growth and suitability.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Dmitri, T. and Bodlaj, M., 2015. Retailing in Slovenia: Current Landscape and Trends.
In European Retail Research (pp. 93-123). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Hortatory, A. and Eversion, C., 2015. The ongoing evolution of US retail: A format tug-of-war.
Journal of Economic Perspectives. 29(4). pp.89-112.
Lamba, K. and Singh, S. P., 2017. Big data in operations and supply chain management: current
trends and future perspectives. Production Planning & Control. 28(11-12). pp.877-890.
Allouhi, A., and et. al 2015. Energy consumption and efficiency in buildings: current status and
future trends. Journal of Cleaner production.109.pp.118-130