Retail sales witnessed slowest growth in festive period hinting that consumers feel the pinch of the price rise

The United Kingdom has faced many challenges since Brexit and price rise is one of the worst after effects of Brexit. People have actually started avoiding the purchase of non essential goods or commodities that were meant primarily for luxury purposes. As per a survey, the slowest spending rates were observed in January this year.

As per the reports by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), there was a 1.1% rise in sales between November and January this year. While food sales rose by 2%, the non-food item sale dropped by 0.3%. Like for like sales fell by 0.6% in January as opposed to a 2.6% hike in January 2016.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said: “Looking across the last three months, we’ve seen the slowest growth of the festive period since 2009. These figures suggest that 'caution’ was top of new-year shopping lists and the uptick in credit card lending at the end of the last year may be short lived.”

Barclaycard data suggested a 4.4% rise in the spending since January, which was a big jump since 2012. The survey also suggested a 15.3% increase on spending on fuels like petrol. While this might be a good start, customers show concern over the increasing prices of essential things.

Paul Lockstone, managing director at Barclaycard, said: “January’s uplift in spending represents a strong start to the year. Big increases in the amount spent at supermarkets and on petrol, coupled with careful spending across a number of non-essential categories, do however suggest that consumers are starting to feel the impact of inflation on their everyday lives.”

However, data from Barclaycard also suggested that around two third of customers are seeking more value for money and limit their purchases to essential goods only. Well, no one can deny the increase in prices and all we can do is make intelligent purchases by doing price comparison at independent and impartial comparison websites like FreePriceCompare.com.