Optimistic islanders

In the United Kingdom, the political and economic uncertainty after the Brexit vote didn’t have an influence on consumers’ mood in Q4 2016, because real wages were rising all year and the level of unemployment hasn’t been this low (4.8 percent) for a decade. Compared with Q4 2015, value sales dropped 0.3 percent and volume sales stayed put in the examined period.

The price war between supermarkets lasted all year, and thanks to the savings that resulted from this, consumer demand for FMCG products stayed high. Shoppers went in the direction of buying less on more occasions. In Q4 2016 the consumer confidence index was 102 points in the UK – 2 points above the optimism threshold and 21 points higher than the European average.

As for the three components of the index, 43 percent of Brits thought their job prospects were more or less good (European average: 31 percent), 53 percent of them said their personal finances would be OK in the following 12 months (European average: 42 percent) and 53 percent thought the time was right to buy what they wanted or needed (European average: 34 percent).