Retailers to promote 'payday perks' to help boost flagging sales

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Retailers to promote 'payday perks' to help boost flagging sales.

As many retail groups are still trading on a knife's edge, designing special promotions to coincide with payday weekends will become more common as hard pressed retailers look to boost flagging sales.

"Consumers are not impulse buying, often painstakingly researching every considered purchase on the Internet to find the best price," said Helen Mountney, who heads the UK practice of Kurt Salmon, the management consultancy specialising in retail and consumer goods. "However, there is a growing trend for having a 'treat' at the end of the month and canny retailers are tapping into this."

Other ways in which retailers are addressing the "new norm" of difficult trading and flatline growth are outlined in Retail 2013, a survey of leading retailers carried out by business magazine Retail Week in association with Kurt Salmon, which is published today.

"While this year will not have the feel-good factors of the Olympic Games and the Diamond Jubilee, most retailers do not think that 2013 will be any worse than last year, and in the absence of growth and optimism, stability is arguably the next best thing," confirms Retail Week's Editor in Chief Chris Brook-Carter.

"Store bosses say they will be investing more in their stores than they did last year, as well as integrating them with their online and mobile propositions to give the consumer the best possible shopping experience."

According to Mountney retailers who understand how customers shop across different channels and can tailor their products to an individual customer will be best positioned to survive.

"For years, retailers have been able to analyse how individual customers moved throughout their websites and apply that knowledge to help boost sales. Bricks and mortar retailers need to start using technology to help them personalise the shopping experience"

^{*The definitive report on the state of the retail industry, by the leaders in retail, previously produced in 2011 and 2012, Retail 2013 surveyed 28 retailers whose annual sales topped £56n – around one-sixth of the total retail sales.}