Retailer research reveals retailer sentiment and increasing importance of social media into 2013

Retailer research reveals retailer sentiment and increasing importance of social media into 2013

Half of UK retailers are very confident about trading in 2013, according to a survey by cloud-based retail software provider Cybertill.

Only 13% of the survey's 620 retail respondents stated they were ‘not very confident’. The retailers questioned ranged from a number of sectors including fashion, bicycles, sports, charity, furniture, footwear, department stores and off licenses.

Reasons given for a confident outlook tended to be sector-specific. One retailer said: "[The] cycle industry is good at the moment," while another stated: "People are less excited by online shopping in furniture sector...and greater footfall in-store."

The economic outlook was also cited by a number of confident retailers, with comments including "Customer confidence is up" among other examples. By contrast, those responses with a negative outlook were all related to the health of the economy, such as, "People don’t have the money to spend," or "Economic climate still difficult".

Moving in social networking channels

The survey also asked retailers if they used social media and for what purposes. A majority (80%) of said they actively used social media within their business. Facebook and Twitter were most widely used, with 97% on Facebook and four in every five using Twitter. Only a handful were currently using LinkedIn and Pinterest. Of the retailers that used social media, 40% used it to drive sales to their business, while only one in five said they did not.

Further analysis found 71% of respondents using social media as a sales tool employ it particularly for communicating special offers. Over half use it for public relations, such as communicating with the press and bloggers. And the third most popular social media application for over half of respondents was customer engagement to help better understand demand. One in four retailers was also using social media do so to help optimise their e-commerce sites in search engines.

Ian Tomlinson, chief executive of Cybertill, said that the High Street has faced some testing times over the last few years. "Our survey hints at better times ahead for retailers with many feeling positive about 2013," he commented.

"The proliferation of social media highlights that it is becoming a sales channel in its own right and is adding to retailers’ bottom line. It’s good to see 80% of retailers are exploiting this channel" added Tomlinson. "The overarching challenge for them is to make their sales channels seamless, so the customer experience is the same no matter what channel they buy or order through.”