The chill wind that has been threatening to blow into the high street claimed D2 in the final week of December. On 30 December, it struck Hawkin’s Bazaar. The toy chain entered into administration with its owner Tobar Group citing difficult trading conditions on the high street. This is the same retailer who announced its [...]

We have devised a metric that enables shopping centres and leisure schemes to determine the effectiveness of their Facebook marketing. The metric uses the square footage of the scheme to establish a median baseline for Fan numbers. It enables any scheme to determine its optimal number of Fans based on a metric of 1 sq [...]

More than 20 stores are closing every day according to research from PwC/Local Data Company. Much of the blame is falling on the government’s austerity measures that are squeezing incomes across the UK. However, this seems over-simplistic when there are two additional factors at work. Firstly, the boom years created a surfeit of shops, arguably as [...]

On 25 May, the Office of National Statistics announced that household spending had slumped to its lowest rate in nearly two years, underlining the sluggishness of Britain’s economy. The weakness in consumer spending had begun even before the public spending cuts had kicked in, fuelling expectations that the Bank of England will not rush to [...]