"The festive period was fairly lackluster for the high street"
- Vicky Redwood, an economist at Capital Economics
Britain's retail sales dropped unexpectedly in December, as consumer uncertainty extended into the key Christmas trading season for British stores. According to the Office for National Statistics, the volume of retail sales falling by 0.1% in the busiest shopping month of the year, after being flat in the previous month. Analysts, however, expected a 0.2% increase. Excluding fuel, retail sales dropped 0.3% in the last month of 2012 from a month ago and were up 1.1% from a year earlier. This is the slowest annual growth for this period since 1998, indicating that the economy is still struggling to gain the momentum.
"The festive period was fairly lackluster for the high street," said Vicky Redwood, an economist at Capital Economics in London. "With consumers' real pay still falling, demand is unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future."
"This was a very online Christmas," Rahul Sharma, retail analyst at Neev Capital, told the BBC. "People want to be able to compare prices online. They like the ability to shop online, maybe picking up in the store, and the retailers who can adapt to that the best are the ones who are really going to win."
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