During the Christmas period in 2018, some UK retailers performed better than others. The online fashion group, Asos, announced a profit warning while Next (a fashion firm that targets middle market), John Lewis (a traditional department store group) and Dunelm (homewares retailer) performed better than the expectations. Of course, it will be more interesting to have some figures announced by Amazon, but the data have not arrived yet.
It would be too rush to conclude that the online shopping has reached its peak just given the disappointing figures by Asos without any information about the biggest online store, Amazon. However, we can see that the department store has gained more attention from the consumers that people are still enjoying street shopping in a nice environment. People have enjoyed the convenience of online shopping, but convenience is not the only concern that consumers have. Some people also enjoy shopping experience rather than simply buying some products, they like to see, touch and try the products. Moreover, some people see shopping as some luxury spent with family and having some food and even watch some films when they are out for shopping. Such experience will never be gained from online shopping.
Moreover, the market confidence in the UK did not seem very impressing. The Christmas sales were not impressive overall, so far it seems there were more retailers underperforming during the Christmas period than those who performed well. This should provide some worrying signals about the UK economy, especially after the sharp drop in the UK financial market in 2018 Q4.
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