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Retail sales witnessed slowest growth hinting that consumers feel the pinch of the price rise

consumers feel the pinch of the price rise



The United Kingdom has faced many challenges since Brexit and price rise is one of the worst
after effects of Brexit. People have actually started avoiding the purchase of non essential goods
or commodities that were meant primarily for luxury purposes.

UK Households are striving to curb their personal and household finances since after Brexit. According
to the Ofgem’s recent report, around 7.7million gas or electricity switches took place by customers with
an aim to secure savings on annual energy bill in 2016. It shows a surge of 28% compared to the last year
2015 where 6 million people shopped around for the thrifty deal. Small or medium energy suppliers
are outstripped Big six firms in the retail energy market. Among 7.7 million switches, 3.61million
customers moved to such small or medium suppliers.

As per a survey, the slowest spending rates were
observed in January this year.

As per the reports by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), there was a 1.1% rise in sales between
November and January this year. While food sales rose by 2%, the non-food item sale dropped
by 0.3%. Like for like sales fell by 0.6% in January as opposed to a 2.6% hike in January 2016.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said: “Looking across the last three months,
we’ve seen the slowest growth of the festive period since 2009. These figures suggest
that 'caution’ was top of new-year shopping lists and the uptick in credit card lending at the
end of the last year may be short lived.”

Barclaycard data suggested a 4.4% rise in the spending since January, which was a big jump since 2012.
The survey also suggested a 15.3% increase on spending on fuels like petrol. While this might be
a good start, customers show concern over the increasing prices of essential things.

Paul Lockstone, managing director at Barclaycard, said: “January’s uplift in spending represents
a strong start to the year. Big increases in the amount spent at supermarkets and on petrol,
coupled with careful spending across a number of non-essential categories, do however
suggest that consumers are starting to feel the impact of inflation on their everyday lives.”


However, data from Barclaycard also suggested that around two third of customers are seeking
more value for money and limit their purchases to essential goods only. Well, no one can deny
the increase in prices and all we can do is make intelligent purchases like choose discounted
daily deals offered by FreePriceCompare.



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