US retail fails to emerge from March snow - Euclid

09 Apr '14

3 min read

Euclid, the leader of in-store retail analytics, releases its monthly retail benchmarks report to analyze shopper activity and behavior during the month of March.

This month’s report measured data from tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions to reveal that shopper activity rebounded from February as a result of improving weather and increased disposable income, but traffic and engagement lagged compared to last year.

Based on the findings, Euclid asserts that these metrics illustrate a weak outlook for industry revenues, estimating general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other (GAFO) retail sales grew by 0.2 percent year-over-year.

Overall, shopper traffic and repeat visits remained below last year’s levels as bad weather remained a challenge for much of the country. In addition, in-store engagement was weaker than last year as a result of Easter falling deeper into April.

Here are some of Euclid’s top findings in this month’s report around shopper behavior metrics:

-Shopper traffic declined one percent compared to the same month last year, as visits were negatively impacted by continued cold weather on the East Coast, although this headwind was slightly mitigated by bouts of warmer than usual weather on the West Coast and an acceleration of tax refunds in March.

-Storefront conversion was up one percent as a result of improved weather, an increase in disposable income, and the continuation of a heavily promotional environment.

-Average duration decreased three percent from last year as the late Easter caused many shoppers to have less intent to browse heavily during their store visits in March.

-Repeat visits increased one percent from February, bouncing back nicely after last month’s dip as a result of pent up demand carrying extra visits over into this month.

The best day of the month was Wednesday the 5th, with some of March’s best customer engagement performance as well as a strong storefront conversion. This day also attracted the highest percentage of valuable repeat shoppers during the month. The worst day of the month was Thursday the 13th, which saw underperformance across all metrics, but most notably traffic and average duration.

About Euclid

Euclid provides answers and insights to brick and mortar retailers in the same way that web analytics services do for e-commerce. Euclid helps retailers quantify offline impact of marketing, optimize store performance, and understand customer behavior. As of March 2014 Euclid's network has grown to capture six billion measurements per day, analyzing 250 million potential shopping sessions per year across thousands of locations. Only anonymous, non-personal data is ever collected and only aggregated trend data is used for analysis.

Euclid

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