The retail industry in Brazil has been doing well – better than expected, in fact. According to Forbes, January's sales increased 0.4 percent over December's numbers in the South American marketplace, and annual growth is even more impressive at 6.2 percent. However, experts are wary of getting too excited about this growth following a rough year for Brazilian retail.

"We remain cautious about activity in this first quarter of the year," Marcelo Salomon, Barclays' chief Brazilian economist, told Forbes.

In December, sales dropped 0.2 percent, adding to the weak economic growth of 4.3 percent for this industry. Reuters reported that this was the worst year for the retail industry since 2003, due in part to slow job growth, weakening currency and tighter lending. In January, the growth was strewn across a few different sectors – fuel, furniture, supermarket, medicine and office supplies all saw gains, and all but supermarket sales had recovered from losses in December, Forbes indicated.

Retailers in the Brazilian market may want to revisit their retail marketing strategies to take advantage of the slight growth and draw in more customers. Something as straightforward as upgrading POS software can make a merchant more appealing to consumers. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, March 18th, 2014 at 6:48 am .