2017 Home Shopping Trends Report.

In spite of all the fears, uncertainty and doubts, 2016 proved another strong year for the home shopping sector. This is the conclusion from the recently released 2017 Epsilon Abacus Home Shopping Trends Report.

These findings are based on analysis carried out on the transactional activity of Abacus Alliance members for 2015 and 2016. The report highlights:

• Sales in the sector rose by 12.3% year-on-year
• Q4 growth represented the highest quarter for the year, growing 16.2%
• Aligned to this, December achieved the highest growth of any single month - 20.3% year-on-year
• There was a slight rise - 1.3% - in average order value for the sector

The EU referendum did impact on mailing plans and consumer spending across some of the categories. Any concerns were dispelled later in the year, with a strong return of consumer confidence.

Nick Alderton, Managing Director at menswear company Peter Christian neatly summed this up:

"When the referendum campaign kicked into gear, sales went flat and didn’t recover quickly. Then in autumn, the nation seemed to wake up, dust themselves down and say, “Hang about, the world hasn’t fallen off a cliff here, we can carry on a bit.” We managed to recover all of the lost momentum and made up the sales we lost and ended the year strongly."

Clothing has proved to be a robust category over the years. Another category that did well was Food & Wine. With sales heavily biased toward the end of the year, they rose 23.4% year-on-year overall. November and December showed very strong year-on-year growth of 29.2% and 29.8% respectively.

While the Report highlights the resilience of the sector in 2016, this year the challenges remain. The pressure on margins from a weaker pound, preparation for the General Data Protection Regulation and continued uncertainty - politically and around Brexit- are just three. How will this eventually play out? Well, that will be reflected in our 2018 Report.

To download a copy of the Report, please click here.