March 2020 UK Retail Sales: Coronavirus Lockdown Inflicts Severe Blow to Discretionary Sector; Decline Set To Worsen in April

What's Inside

Total UK retail sales declined in March, with some sectors taking big hits due to the impact of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown. However, the grocery sector reported strong growth, as we predicted in our February monthly sales report.

We review the monthly data for UK retail in total and by sector:

• We chart the trend in total value and volume retail sales growth over the last 13 months.
• We show value sales growth for 20 sectors across food and nonfood retail, for each of the latest three months.
• We discuss growth in online retail sales, by major sector.

Coresight Research’s monthly reports keep you up to date on US and UK retail sales, US retail traffic and in-store metrics, selected US retailers’ same-store sales and key global consumer indicators. Click here to view our full collection of monthly reports.