Business Barometer gauges mood of Home Shopping Market

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The Abacus Business Barometer, an online survey, was issued to all members of the Abacus Alliance and ran for 2 weeks in May 2010. Over thirty key members representing 8 major home shopping categories including Women’s Fashion & Accessories, Men & Women’s Clothing, Home Interiors, Gifts, Collectables, Health & Beauty, Music, Video & Entertainment and Plants & Seeds responded to 4 preset questions. Their answers make for interesting reading.

Looking back to the pre-Christmas trends of 2009, Abacus found that certain areas of the mail order industry saw positive year on year growth in the run up to Christmas, whilst others didn’t fare quite as well.  Overall the total spend in those mail order categories analysed fell slightly by -0.6% year on year but significantly, average order values were up by +2.7%. So what does the picture look like today?

When asked compared to this time last year, on the whole, is business better, worse or the same, 60% of respondents said it was better, 30% said it was the same and only 10% said business was worse.

When asked compared to this season last year, are the prospects for the mail order industry business better, worse or the same, 17% said their prospects were worse but a huge 83% believed that their prospects were either better or the same than the equivalent season of 2009.

When asked to look ahead to the next 3 months and specify whether they were less or more optimistic about their company’s business prospects, 27% felt they would be the same, 23% were less optimistic, whilst importantly 50% of home marketing professionals said that they are more optimistic about the next 3 months of trading.

Finally, respondents were asked if they felt that the recent change in government would affect their business - nearly 3 quarters (73%) of those polled felt that it would not. It is worth noting that this survey was conducted prior to the recent budget announcement.

Commenting on the results of the Abacus Business Barometer Survey, Matthew Pepper, Country Director, said “These results provide a fascinating insight into the UK home shopping sector and clearly show a high level of trading optimism. Of significant interest was the fact that 83% of our members believed that their prospects either better or the same than the same period in 2009.”