It\u2019s the time of year when the Christmas period sales results come in, and the assessment of winners and loses takes place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My own Top 5 conclusions\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top of Retail Week\u2019s \u2018Christmas trading 2022 league table\u2019 has a strangely familiar feel to it, featuring the likes of JDSports, Greggs, Next, B&M, Sainsburys and Tesco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u2018Cost-of-living\u2019 crisis, of course, has fuelled sales in value retailers such as Aldi, Lidl and Poundland. No surprise there. Value is an essential for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it certainly does not have to be the main proposition. Well-known names such as Boots and M&S have grown their value ranges, Tesco & Sainsburys have been smart with price-locking, Halfords has created loyalty through its membership scheme. The best performers are strategically coordinating all these various value tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The importance of physical real estate is being seen everywhere, with growth from shop refurbishments, and more precisely located and conceived new concepts, whilst Hobbycraft drove footfall delivering creative workshops to over 16,000 adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Click & Collect has added new relevance, reliability and convenience to physical shops, as Argos found its commercial feet inside a myriad of Sainsbury stores, whilst retailers from Hobbycraft to the Perfume Shop saw double digit growth from shop collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the biggest winners and \u2018retail revivals\u2019 are being driven by the digital transformation of business cultures & processes, that now put customer data at the heart of their omnichannel models. Traditional best practices, and physical shop experiences have been supercharged in M&S and Boots, to name but two, whilst e-commerce has surged once more through digital team coordination, and end-to-end customer personalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result, the brands that people always wanted to trust, are now consistently delivering on their promises, through whichever touchpoint the customer wants to use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nobody is getting rich doing nothing, and the fruits of much unseen hard work and painstaking operational re-management is now coming to fruition for some of our most famous retailing brands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically, it seems that the \u2018old dogs\u2019 have been decidedly better at learning \u2018new tricks,\u2019 than many of the glossy, superficial pureplay upstarts ever gave them credit for!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas cheer, and retail gold will continue to be found where \u2019New Thinking & Processes\u2019 are combined with \u2018Old Values & Channels.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s the time of year when the Christmas period sales results come in, and the assessment of winners and loses takes place. My own Top 5 conclusions\u2026 The top of Retail Week\u2019s \u2018Christmas trading 2022 league table\u2019 has a strangely familiar feel to it, featuring the likes of JDSports, Greggs, Next, B&M, Sainsburys and Tesco. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,739,776,19,746,534,28,840,859,7,493,858,856,857,854,855,533,29,26,6,93,466,369,132,25],"tags":[948],"class_list":["post-7230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-assortment-structure-planning","category-branding-visual-communication","category-customer-experience","category-customer-service","category-customer-engagement","category-disruptive-retail","category-high-street-planning","category-location-strategy","category-meaning-in-the-retail-madness","category-new-retail","category-omni-channel-retailing","category-personalisation","category-retail","category-retail-businesses","category-retail-management","category-retail-organisations","category-retail-strategy","category-retail-regeneration","category-sales-promotions-events","category-social-savvy","category-store-experience","category-store-operations","category-store-theatre","category-town-centre-planning","category-value-retailing","category-website-excellence","tag-omnichannel-retail-retailmeaning-retailstrategy-ms-boots-retailexperience-newretail-customerservice-storeoperations-retailtechnology-christmas"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/keep-feet-firmly-on-the-ground.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7230"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21110,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230\/revisions\/21110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}