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EDITORIAL Mapping the shape of shopping in this year’s peak trading period

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In today’s InternetRetailing newsletter we’re reporting on the shape of shopping over this peak trading period. The run up to Christmas started with a slowdown in retail sales in the run-up to Black Friday, as mapped in the latest retail sales figures from the ONS. Because those November figures run up to November 23, they don’t cover Black Friday on November 29 – which appears to have seen record sales. Instead, they give an interesting picture of how shoppers appear to have held back from buying until Black Friday promotions came into full effect just in time for payday at the end of the month. That may well be part of the tough retail conditions cited as playing a part in The Book People going into administration earlier this week. 

Our analysis of the shape of Christmas shopping continues with our regular peak 2019 round-up, today featuring research that suggests retailers can expect spikes in requests for express deliveries from last-minute shoppers over the course of this peak period. The piece also looks at how retailers are changing the way they deliver over Christmas as they look to reassure shoppers that their Christmas deliveries will arrive, while offering more environmentally-friendly fulfilment options. 

Today we also report as Whistles reports sales growth across channels in its latest financial year. 

We have the first in a series of ecommerce and multichannel retail predictions for 2020 that will be running into the New Year. In this first installment, we focus on the changing way that retailers might be using customer data in 2020. Today’s guest comment comes from Johan Boström of inRiver, who considers how retailers might deal with a big retail industry problem – serial returners.

This is our last InternetRetailing newsletter of 2019. The first of 2020 will be published on January 3 2020. In the meantime, we’d like to wish readers a very happy Christmas, and a merry New Year.

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