Shoppers snap up last-minute buys

LONDON - Shoppers surged into stores during the final weekend before Christmas but analysts said it would not be enough to make up for slow sales in earlier weeks of crucial festive trading.

The Retail Footfall Index released on Monday showed shopper traffic rose 6.8 percent on Saturday, December 22 and preliminary figures indicated a 25 percent surge in footfall on December 23.

It showed a last minute surge after a predominantly negative footfall trend since early December that caused well known apparel brands like French Connection to bring forward discounting to try and lure shoppers through their doors.

Analyst Martin Davies, from data tracker Experian, which compiles the Footfall Index, said this year Christmas shopping -- which normally shows a steady build-up from mid-November -- had been concentrated in two peak weekends.

"The slow and steady browsing patterns of previous years have now been replaced by a new breed of savvy shoppers who either buy online or use Internet sites to find the best prices on the High Street, before doing one or two big swoops to retail parks or shopping centres to buy everything at once," he said.

Retail industry analysts are predicting supermarkets such as Tesco, online sellers and some department stores like John Lewis Partnership will be the winners in the crucial Christmas shopping season when stores can earn as much as half of their yearly sales.

Shares in clothing retailers, like Debenhams and Next, have sustained deep losses in recent days on expectations consumers could spend less on discretionary items, with shopper morale falling in the face of higher mortgage rates and weaker housing markets.

Pali International analyst Nick Bubb said on Monday that with the exception of John Lewis, it looked to have been a pretty tough Christmas for high street stores with like-for-like sales growth hard to come by without discounting.

"The usual last-minute spending spree will make up for some lost ground, but some damage will have been done to gross margins and share prices are discounting big profit downgrades of one sort or another in January and beyond," he said in a note.