Despite the cost-of-living crisis, overall retail sales increased in January 2023 compared to December 2022. The Office of National Statistics reported that sales were up 0.5% compared to December 2022, suggesting that shoppers held out for bargains in the January sales. There was also a 0.5% decrease in sales volumes for food shops, which can be attributed to the rise in food prices and increased cost of living. Sales from online retailers increased by 2% in January 2023 which the ONS suggests was due to New Year’s sales offers.
The picture was very different for town and city centres which normally have their strongest month of the year in the December run up to Christmas, followed by a steep fall in retail sales in January, which is one of the weakest months of the year. This year, the 62 city and town centres monitored by Beauclair experienced a 13% decrease in sales between December 2022 and January 2023. Nevertheless, as always, some towns and city centers across GB fared better than others and were able to maintain a higher Average Transaction Value from customers.
Beauclair has used its January 2023 consumer retail sales data to classify the 62 city and town centres. Rather than looking simply at overall sales levels, the classification system uses clustering to find similarities between cities’ and towns’ customers, the share of sales of different sectors and average transaction values. The final 3 categories of town and city center classification are displayed below, alongside their attributes:
The following 62 large town and cities alongside their classification are displayed below:
| Visitor cities | Market towns | Mixed |
|---|---|---|
| Birmingham | Aldershot | Aberdeen |
| Blackpool | Barnsley | Bradford |
| Bournemouth | Basildon | Coventry |
| Brighton | Birkenhead | Crawley |
| Bristol | Blackburn | Derby |
| Cambridge | Burnley | Doncaster |
| Cardiff | Chatham | Dundee |
| Edinburgh | Gloucester | Hull |
| Exeter | Huddersfield | Ipswich |
| Glasgow | Luton | London |
| Leeds | Mansfield | Middlesbrough |
| Leicester | Northampton | Newport |
| Liverpool | Peterborough | Plymouth |
| Manchester | Portsmouth | Preston |
| Milton Keynes | Slough | Reading |
| Newcastle | Telford | Southend |
| Norwich | Wakefield | Stoke |
| Nottingham | Warrington | Stoke |
| Oxford | Worthing | Sunderland |
| Sheffield | Swansea | |
| Southampton | Swindon | |
| York | Wigan |
For large visitor cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow, weekend sales in the Food & Drink and General Retail sectors to out-of-towners was a strong component. In comparison, sales in the market towns category were driven more strongly by sales to locals during the weekdays on necessities such as groceries. Finally, the mixed category experienced sales driven by locals and visitors evenly distributed across weekdays and weekends. This group of towns and cities had sales driven by the Fashion sector as well as exclusively in-person activities such as hairdressers and nail salons. Interestingly, London’s January 2023 sales were classified within the mixed category rather than being defined as a visitor city. London’s categorisation can be attributed to having one of the lowest Average Transaction Values at £12 which might be associated with the largest use of public transport across GB. London also has a larger proportion of weekday sales compared to the other large GB cities that get more visitors on the weekends.