Monthly survey on retail trade 2023Mar

Published on 20 April 2023

Turnover in retail trade strengthened in March
Note: The trend in retail sales does not reflect that of total household consumption: the latter includes other items such as health care, education and rents.


In March, turnover in retail trade rose, up 1.8% compared with February (adjusted for seasonal and working-day variations), when it had fallen slightly by 0.4% compared with January. Sales of manufactured goods grew by 1.1% (after 0.2% in February) on average, with contrasting trends across sub-sectors: new car sales (up 5.4% after 2.4%), footwear (up 2.5% after -1.0%), books (up 2.2% after -1.5%) and perfume and jewellery (up 1.9% after 2.8 %) all improved, while the DIY (-5.2 % after -2.4 %), cycles and motorcycles (-2.9% after 1.6 %) and wearing apparel and textiles (-2.3 % after 1.0 %) sectors all lost ground.

In terms of distribution channels, sales of small retailers (up 2.2% in March) and hypermarkets (0.8%) were offset by the decline in department store sales (-3.3%), while those of supermarkets were relatively stable.

Quarter-on-quarter, overall turnover in retail trade strengthened (1.6%), thanks to the increase in manufactured goods (2.5%), while the downward trend in food sales continued (-2%).
Total manufactured goods and food sales: M/M-1 change (%)
Month-on-month change; seasonally and working-day adjusted volume terms
Notes :
1) Sectors are classified according to the relative weight of the products included in the total aggregate of retail trade (weights are given on the right scale)
2) The aggregated and by sub-sector series are seasonally adjusted on an individual basis: the seasonally adjusted series do not represent the sum of the seasonally adjusted components.

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