English Assignment help on : IMPACT OF OLYMPICS ON RETAIL SECTOR OF UK
INTRODUCTION
There was an economic downturn in all over the world in 2007 but despite of this economic downturn the retail industry of UK saw growth in 2009. In 2009 the sales revenue of UK’s retail sector was approximately £ 285 billion and is growing. In 2010 the retail sector saw a growth of 2.1 % on the last year as well as number of full time jobs created by the industry in 2010 was 12750. The number of retail units in 2010 in UK was 286000. One third of the retail spending was done through the shops. But now online shopping trend is growing at a rapid speed. With the help of online shopping the retail industry is still growing and now it has 150,000 online retail business websites. Currently the sale of retail industry through the online medium is growing at a rate of 7 % and it has scope to increase in upcoming years (Prospects 2010). We would be further discussing the impact of Olympics on the retail industry of UK. Whether the impact is positive or negative would be discussed further in the report.
IMPACT OF OLYMPICS ON RETAIL INDUSTRY
Olympics are the big occasion and it affects the businesses of a country. Not only retail industry gets affected due to Olympics but also other businesses such as tourism, food and beverages etc. Some of the businesses have positive impact of Olympics and some have negative. In this report we would be analyzing the impact of Olympics on the retail industry of UK whether the impact is positive or negative. Retailers were hoping that the London 2012 Olympics will boost the sales. But the result which came out after the statistics given by the British Retail Consortium was very disappointing. Statistics says that August was the weakest month for the sales of retail products in 2012 till now. According to the Stephen Robertson (Director General of BRC) there is no evidence of boost in the retail sales due to Olympics in 2012; in fact August was the worst month for the retailers. The results which came out after the Olympics completely rejected the estimation of the experts, who believed that Olympics would be beneficial for the industry (4 News 2012).
Statistics from BRC says that in the month of August in last year sales by value were dropped by 0.4 % and in current year it dropped by 0.6 %. When we include the new store opened we found that the sales volume were up by 1.6 % which was 1.5 % in August 2011. A survey conducted by the BRC fond that the streets of retail shops were empty during the Olympics and in other parts of the country there were boost in the industry like food and beverages. Marketing research company AC Nielson explores the data that sales growth of food and beverages sector was 3.5 % higher than last year. Soft drinks, confectionary and crisps and snacks increased the sales by 10 %, 8 % and 7 % respectively. Director General Robertson said that the loss due to Olympics in the retail industry cannot be compensated with the boost in the food and beverages industry. The month of august was very disappointing for the clothing and other retail industries. In fact the electronic items like large screen televisions were sold on a high scale during the first month of the Olympics (Chapman, M 2012).
Retailers tried to get the value of Olympics and they gave many new offers to attract the customers during the months of July and August e.g. Tesco. But these strategies did not work and retailers were left disappointed. The biggest impact was seen on the online business of retail industry. The sales growth in online retailing in the month of August was 4.8 % which is the lowest figure since the first collection of data in 2008. With the results of retail industry what we can understand is that the people were highly busy in the Olympics and they did not show interest in shopping. Especially in major items like clothing etc. According to the online retailers the activities of consumers on the online shopping websites were very less in evenings as they were busy with the games. Robertson said that if people were not able to watch the games on televisions; they were accessing it on PC’s and mobiles (Treanor, J & Moulds, J 2012).
CONCLUSION
The impact of Olympics was negative on the retail industry of UK. Many experts predicted that it will boost the sales volume but the retailers were disappointed. It is clear that shoppers were more interested in Olympics than going to the retail stores and shopping. But now the statistics says that the retail industry will become able to overcome of the problem of recession. Decline in manufacturing in UK has declined in August which has given a hope to the retailers (ITV 2012).
Bank of England has programmed for the quantitative easing to bring UK out of recession and it will be providing £ 375 billion. Bank will also hold the interest rate at 0.5 % which is a good sign for economic condition of UK. The manufacturing PMI has increased and reached to four months high index of 49.5. The problems which were faced by the retailers and other industries were because of the double dip recession in beginning of the year in the UK. The statistics show that economy of UK shrank by 0.5 % in the second quarter of the year (Inman, P 2012).
August is also generally a weak month for the retail sales but in the next three to four months retail sales is expected to grow as Christmas is a force which will enhance the sales of the retail stores. At the occasion of Christmas shoppers will be interested in shopping which would be beneficial for retail sector. Retailers will look to maximize their profitability in the upcoming months.
If you want English Assignment Help study samples to help you write professional custom essay’s and essay writing help.
Receive assured help from our talented and expert writers! Did you buy assignment and assignment writing services from our experts in a very affordable price.
To get more information, please contact us or visit www.myassignmenthelp.Com
