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Oct 21, 2016
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Young UK consumers are upbeat says PwC survey

Published
Oct 21, 2016

UK consumer confidence is holding up well despite concerns over how Brexit will affect household discretionary spend, a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 2,050 people has found.

UK consumers remained upbeat in September


PwC said on Friday that its gauge of expectations for the next 12 months was positive in September. The survey showed 19% of consumers felling they will be better off than rather worse off over the next year. The figure for July, just after the EU referendum, was 15%. And 6% think they will be a lot better off, compared to 5% feeling that way in July.

Young people were more upbeat that older consumers with PwC saying 51% of those aged 18-24 expect to be better off over the next 12 months compared to 20% of those aged over 65.

And people in London were the most confident regionally with 40% of respondents feeling they will be better off in a year.

However, one-third of those taking part across the UK said they would reduce their Christmas spending with only 10% planning to increase spending and 6% planing to buy no Christmas presents.

Commenting on this apparent caution around Christmas spending, Lisa Hooker, partner at PwC, said the sentiment contrasts with the findings overall that consumers expect to be better off. So PwC does not necessarily expect these consumer intentions to reflect in worse retail sales over the festive trading period.

Overall, PwC is positive on the outlook for this Christmas. In particular, October, November and December have been warmer than average for the last three years in a row and if 2016 reverts to the long term average, a chillier than recent run up to Christmas could be good news for many stores. PwC said clothing and outdoor goods retailers could benefit, as well as destination shopping centres and department stores where consumers can do all their shopping under one roof.

But we could see a weakening of the grip of Black Friday as a key shopping day this year. Hooker added that 27% of respondents said they would shop earlier than late December this year but that “Black Friday and Cyber Monday do look to be waning in importance though, for consumers as well as retailers.”

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