Dr. Alan Treadgold, head of retail strategy, Leo Burnett Group:
For marketers, developing a strategy to encourage shoppers back into stores for the crucial Christmas period is an increasingly difficult, but critical, task. According to the Local Data Company, on average 14.5 per cent of UK stores are vacant. If that sounds bad enough, there are many town centres where well over one in four shops stand shuttered up and vacant. Doing your shopping in a high street where every third or fourth shop is closed for business is likely to be as dispiriting and depressing for the shoppers as it is for the business owners who have lost their stores and their livelihoods. (more…)
