Sales through out of town are set to increase by 2.4% in 2014, outperforming both town centre, and neighbourhood, for the first time in three years. However, while it starts out strong, this growth will plateau with both town centre and neighbourhood passing it, in terms of sales growth, by 2019. In order to drive footfall, out of town must develop its overall mix to serve a wider customer base. Learn more with sample pages from our UK Out of Town Retailing report.

2. Verdict sample pages
UK Out Of Town Retailing page 2
Retail Issues
Figure 1: Asda Drive Thru collection point
Source: Asda V E R D I C T
Following successful trials, grocers are developing their click & collect
offer rapidly
Initial responses to grocers' click & collect offers have been positive, leading to further roll out. Asda
has 300 Drive Thru points for collection and offers the service through 568 of its stores, with plans to
introduce such points at all of its stores by summer 2014. Tesco, meanwhile, has 1,600 stores and
200 drive through points in car parks. Waitrose is trialling temperature controlled lockers in its stores,
which will be rolled out next year, as well as a GPS system which allow orders to be prepared when
the customer approaches a store. Sainsbury's offers free click & collect on non-food orders over £15,
but is yet to offer a similar food offer, while Morrisons is expected to launch a comparable offer later
in 2014. This investment indicates that grocers are fully committed to developing click & collect.
Figure 2: Customers still want home delivery option
Source: Verdict V E R D I C T

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Out of town major players: winners & losers
In the last five years, the only profiled retailers which have contracted the number of stores
they operate are Dixons Retail and Homebase. The main drivers behind the sharp decline
at Dixons were the closure of unprofitable stores as well as separate Currys and PC World
stores being combined into single entities. We expect the reduction in the number of stores
it operates in to continue for the foreseeable future, with the retailer commenting that it
believes it only needs between 380 and 400 stores to operate successfully in the UK. This
would mean a further reduction of 157 stores, which we forecast will be spread out over
several years due to the greater incorporation of online and instore sales.
At the other end of the spectrum, the retailer that has opened the most stores over the past
five years is Asda, which has opened a net of 222 stores over the period. This growth has
been driven by the acquisition of Netto in May 2012, which added 193 stores to Asda's
portfolio.
Figure 3: Key out of town retailers' total store number growth (%), 2014e on 2009 (financial year
end)
Source: Verdict V E R D I C T

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Sector Summaries & Forecasts
OOT space sector breakdown
Continued dominance of grocery reduces share of other OOT sectors
Figure 4: Share of out of town space (%), by sector, 2004, 2009 and 2014e
Source: Verdict V E R D I C T
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market, please contact enquiries@verdictretail.com
Some of our channel reports:
UK TOWN CENTRE RETAILING | VERDICT CHANNEL REPORT
UK NEIGHBOURHOOD & CONVENIENCE RETAIL | VERDICT CHANNEL REPORT