In today’s first InternetRetailing newsletter of 2018 we’re looking back to how Christmas trading went and forward to what the New Year holds in store.
From the early data we’ve gathered so far, it seems Christmas was marked by shoppers’ enthusiasm for online shopping – and for discounts. Mastercard research, covered in our latest Peak 2017 round-up, suggests that retailers saw faster growth online than off, while in that piece we also cover trading updates from IRUK Top500 retailers from John Lewis, Next and Debenhams to Mountain Warehouse.
We focus on promotions in particular in our look at the Christmas discounting effect, which is coloured by today’s BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index.
That’s a theme too in our report on how Debenhams is focusing on accelerating its strategy as it looks to get in shape for a fast changing retail environment this New Year, while we also look at how investing in the customer experience and in international expansion is paying off for Gear4Music.
For our look ahead to the New Year we bring you our first set of retail predictions for 2018 around emerging technologies and mobile (with more to come in future weeks) while our guest comment from Swarooprani Muralidhar of FGRT looks at the New Year perennial of wellness and how retailers of all sizes are approaching this theme.
Webinars
Find out more about upcoming InternetRetailing webinars and register for free on the InternetRetailing webinar page. You can also catch up with past webinars on the page: recent sessions have come from IBM Watson on using AI to improve the customer experience, and from SmartFocus and The Entertainer on using social to reach digital customers.
