SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 5, 2014) - Euclid, the leader of in-store retail analytics, today releases its monthly retail benchmarks report to analyze shopper activity and behavior during the month of August. This month's report measured data from tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions to reveal that the Back-to-School period had a significant boost to shopping activity. Traffic increased substantially compared to last month, aided by temperate weather and multi-year highs in consumer confidence. In addition, healthy economic conditions and generous promotions benefitted shopping and contributed to highly engaged visits to the brick-and-mortar store.
Euclid asserts that its metrics illustrate a positive outlook for industry revenues, and estimates sales growth in the following retail verticals of:
- 4% growth year-over-year in general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other (GAFO) retail sales
- 5% growth year-over-year in clothing and apparel sales
- 3% growth year-over-year in general merchandise sales
Here are some of Euclid's top findings in this month's report around shopper behavior metrics:
- Shopper traffic declined three percent compared to the same month last year, but rose seven percent compared to July. Back-to-School shopping brought many consumers back to the brick-and-mortar store
- Storefront conversion was up two percent year-over-year due to highly targeted shopping and deal hunting
- Average duration increased thirteen percent from last year. Consumers are feeling the benefits of rising asset prices and improving labor market conditions, and as a result retailers saw more engaged shoppers who are willing to spend
- Repeat visits decreased one percent year-over-year, dropping to a low for the year as consumers accomplished more Back-to-School shopping in fewer trips
The best shopping day of August was Thursday the 28th. Outperformance was experienced across all metrics on the 28th, with especially favorable numbers for duration, engagement, and bounce rate. This day benefited from a surge in activity to prepare for Labor Day weekend. On the other hand, Tuesday the 5th was the worst shopping day of the month. Low traffic coupled with abnormally high bounce rates marked this day and likely led to sales underperformance.
To view the complete findings, download the full report on shopper activity for the month of August here: http://info.euclidanalytics.com/WC14-08USRB_Reg_RLP.html
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 August 2014 Euclid's network has grown to capture billions of measurements per day, analyzing hundreds of millions of 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.