The National Retail Association, working in partnership with Retail Doctor Group’s Insights Division, conducted research to indicate what retailers can expect from consumers over the next 12 months.

The report is full of valuable information regarding consumer feelings toward inflation and toward planned spending over holiday periods.

The emerging trend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are fast approaching and resulted in being a close second to consumer eagerness to Boxing Day sales.

It is important to understand the key factors which drive consumer engagement with your product and store, to capitalise on these major retail events.

The top four factors influencing a consumers choice of retailer were as follows:

1. free delivery
2. loyalty program
3. free returns
4. friendly staff

Number four is key as you will see in the following four factors that were noted as barriers to customer retention:

1. bad customer service
2. location of stores
3. out of stock items
4. long queues

The report also goes into the top factors employees value the most by their retail employers.