DIY stores losing out as supermarkets take 58p of every £1 spent

A new study has shown that 58p of every £1 spent by shoppers goes to supermarkets as they continue to expand their non-food offering. The figure is up from 46p ten years ago.

The Payment Council’s latest report, The Way We Pay, shows that spending in furniture and homeware shops fell by almost half in the last ten years while newsagents lost nearly a fifth of their trade. In addition, spending in DIY stores is down by nearly half while the amount spent on petrol in supermarkets has almost tripled.

Clothing shops bucked the trend and increased their share of shopping spend by more than two thirds, but still only accounted for 3% of retail purchases.

The study also found that entertainment spending has risen by over 60%, outstripping the growth in consumer spending by over a quarter. The amount spent by consumers in restaurants and cafés has more than doubled in the last ten years, increasing by 102%, while spending on cinemas rose 63%.

UK consumers spent a total of £58 billion on entertainment last year, outstripping the £34 billion spent on gas and electricity.

The way consumers pay for goods and services also changed dramatically in the period with cheque usage continuing to fall and halving every five years.

Only 43% of retail spending by value was via notes and coins with debit card spending rising almost fourfold since 2001. Although three out of five of one-off payments are now small cash transactions, the use of cash is expected to fall by 1% by 2021 as consumers adopt new payment technologies such as contactless payments.

Adrian Kamellard, chief executive of the Payments Council said: "The 2000s were the decade of the debit card. The 2010s are likely to be the decade of the mobile phone. Just as we can’t imagine how we ever did without the internet, many people will soon wonder how we used to be so dependent on cash and cheque. Twenty years from now even cards may seem archaic.

"The quiet revolution in payments has enabled the creation of whole new industries such as e-shopping, it has changed our behaviour, and it has reduced transaction costs, and increased the speed and efficiency with which we can all pay each other.

"The next ten years will see even faster change. It’s easy to imagine a future where we merely pat our pockets for our keys and phone. The wallet could become a historical curiosity."

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Source : The Retail Bulletin
www.retailbulletin.com