March shopping footfall down 17% on March 07: SBP

[Catalpa]

The footfall on Ireland's main shopping streets over the last two weekends of March was down 17% on March 07. Grafton St -16%; Henry St -12%; Shop St Galway and High St Kilkenny -22%; and, Cruises St Limerick -28%. Dublin commuter land towns fare even worse. Athlone with it's new shopping centre is up but surrounding towns like Mullingar are down. However one bright spot was Patricks St Cork +50%.

Strange you should bring that up.

Was down in Blanch Centre earlier late this afternoon and it was noticably quiter.

Usually the place is buzzing on a Sunday afternoon - OK it was still busy but not manic like usual at the weekend.

10- 15% down I would have guessed.

[odie1kanobe]

Course you add in St Patricks weekend and Easter with many people taking holidays and people feel surprised there is a difference.

That and the weather are advanced as possible reasons. Of course we never had weather and a Paddy's Day in Ireland before???
So that just leaves Easter, did 17% of the population (net of incoming tourists) just bug out of the country for two weeks?

You did but with St Patricks weekend and Easter Following and difference celebrations with Church on one day and parade another it skews the figures.

[kerrynorth]

The March retail sales figures from the CSO are going to be interesting what with car sales down 23% as well.

[freedomlover]

The footfall on Ireland's main shopping streets over the last two weekends of March was down 17% on March 07. Grafton St -16%; Henry St -12%; Shop St Galway and High St Kilkenny -22%; and, Cruises St Limerick -28%. Dublin commuter land towns fare even worse. Athlone with it's new shopping centre is up but surrounding towns like Mullingar are down. However one bright spot was Patricks St Cork +50%.

The Sunday Business Post report is now exposed as complete hogwash. Or, perhaps more accurately, lies. The figures it gave are highly selective. The full figures for the country as a whole were published this morning. A description of them is given in Finfacts:

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews ... 3192.shtml

Now that the full figures are out (as distinct from selectively leaking a few, which the SBP did), it emerges that the March shopping footfall for the country as a whole was UP 1.2% compared with March 2007, not down 17% which the title of this thread indicates (no blame to kerrynorth, he was only reporting what the SBP report said).

For the first quarter of 2008 the national shopping football was down 2.1% on 2008. Because of the growth in internet shopping, footfall has lagged behing retail sales growth in recent years. In 2007 the national shopping footfall was down 2% to 3%, but the volume of retail sales was up 5% to 6%. There was a similar pattern in the U. Kingdom and most other countries. The first quarter footfall figures are therefore consistent with the same sort of moderate growth in retail sales that occurred in the final months of 2007.

One wonders why newspapers like the SBP repeatedly indulge in this sort of sensationalist scaremongering based on highly selective statistics? Does it help sell newspapers to headline a story saying that shopping footfall is down 17% year-on-year, based on the figures for a few streets, when the figures for the country as a whole show its UP 1.2%. Or is it more sinister? Perhaps the links of some journalists to extremist political organisations should be investigated? The Sunday Independent had a similar rubbish article on its front page yesterday relating to housing completions in 2008. I exposed this for the nonsense it was on another thread here yesterday. But, really, one wouldn't have to do this if Irish newspapers had the slightest regard for accurate reporting.

[kerrynorth]

Down -2.1% Q1 08 on Q1 07 when it also states that the early Easter ADDED to footfall. Yeah pure hogwash FL! Your not comparing like with like either FL as this report includes shopping centres. And how could the 'High St' figures from the SBP be 'lies' and this report be 'the truth' when the data comes from the same source - Experian!

[freedomlover]

Down -2.1% Q1 08 on Q1 07 when it also states that the early Easter ADDED to footfall. Yeah pure hogwash FL! Your not comparing like with like either FL as this report includes shopping centres. And how could the 'High St' figures from the SBP be 'lies' and this report be 'the truth' when the data comes from the same source - Experian!

You titled your thread "March shopping footfall down 17% on March 07".

We now know that was totally inaccurate, and that the March shopping footfall was UP 1.2% on March 07.

Do you deny that or not?

Accept your responsibility and apologise for opening a thread with a completely inaccurate title, even if you did so inadvertently from being naive enough to believe what you read in the SBP.

The SBP lied because they deliberately selected unrepresentative statistics from the set they had available. If they had access to the Experian figures, they'd have known that the national footfall was UP 1.2% in March, but they failed to mention this in their report and deliberately only gave the figures for a few streets in order to give the impression that it was down by 17% in March.

Could the moderators please change the title of the thread to: "March shopping footfall UP 1.2% on March 07:"?

[Squire Allworthy]

I would welcome a drop in shopping and an increase in saving. Very prudent.

[Bray Head]

[quote=Ard-Taoiseach]

I heard the crowd that compile it on the radio during the week. It didn't sound exactly scientific - some lad stands at the top of Grafton Street with a clicker - and there is presumably also a host of non commercial reasons why less people might have walked past where the guy was standing - other routes etc. Interesting statistics nonetheless.

IS that how they measure these things? Really? I thought they had sensors on either end of the street which clicked every time some-one stepped on them. If it's just a lad with a clicker then I think we can safely dis-regard these sort of indicators. How can one person calculate the exact number of people going up one street in one month? They'd have to have an army of people clicking on the streets for an accurate reading. I have never seen anything like that on my travels through the beautiful thoroughfares of Grafton and Henry St so this information must be inaccurate.[/quote:42172rhi]

I did this job a few years ago and in fact the whole process is actually extremely scientific. You stand in the middle of the street with your back to a colleague and you each press your thumb down on the clicker every time someone goes one way, while another couple does the same at the other end of the street. The numbers on the clickers are collated on the hour in case a device fails or one of the counters decides to go missing.

As far as I know figures are compared with those for a similar weekend on previous years, taking into consideration things like weather conditions and particular events that might either add or subtract from numbers. Statistics are then compared in order to set rents on the particular street or shopping centre.

From a nerdy point of view what we are dealing with is a population rather than a sample, which gives the figures far more credibility than some of the statistics given far more attention on this website (monthly opinion polls with movements inside appreciable margins of error for example).

[Ard-Taoiseach]

For the first quarter of 2008 the national shopping football was down 2.1% on 2008. Because of the growth in internet shopping, footfall has lagged behing retail sales growth in recent years. In 2007 the national shopping footfall was down 2% to 3%, but the volume of retail sales was up 5% to 6%. There was a similar pattern in the U. Kingdom and most other countries. The first quarter footfall figures are therefore consistent with the same sort of moderate growth in retail sales that occurred in the final months of 2007.

.

Fair point, freedomlover. And what with boradband penetration and internet usage reaching new highs, one would expect the foot-fall figures to register a slight drop. I know of several frineds who now do an awful lot of their shopping on-line and indulge in the real-world variety far less frequently. Another encouraging indicator that we are not in meltdown in Ireland. On an anecdotal basis, the amount of houses getting done up in my area is astonishing. I've lost track of who has skips out the front and which house is after getting their driveways done. A good omen for the economy if the people of Ireland continue to spend on repair, improvements and maintanence. It drives the re-balancing of the economy.

[rockyracoon]

The last two Irish economy bulls indulging in mutual on-line statistical manipulation.