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In response to a query, raised on the SnapShop website, about the trends in retail sales between town centres, out-of-town and e-retail, FSP's Managing Director, Geoff Nicholson, writes: The share taken by e-tail is monitored both by ONS and by IMRG. They use different metrics and with adjustments, they broadly tell the same story – the market has grown quickly but is still quite small, i.e. less than 10%.
The in-town/out-of-town split is more difficult to find but is much more significant. FSP has done quite a lot of work, using the development of space and average sales densities, to track the increasing share of the out-of-town market. The greatest push is coming from the supermarkets and their increasing proportion of non-food sales.
FSP has published some top-line results, tracking the market share change over the last 10 years and a projection for the next 10 years. In broad terms, FSP expects the non-food market share of in-town retailing to drop from around 64% in 2000 to around 42% by 2020.
FSP has worked on a number of town centres that are being strangled by edge-of-town developments, particularly large supermarkets. It is surprising that the scale of the change has attracted so little comment or political attention. I can only presume this is testament to the power of the supermarkets.
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