In the U.K., the retail industry has seen four months of continuous growth, but the latest report showed that sales dipped slightly in March. The Confederation of British Industry's Distributive Trades Survey revealed that the sales balance dipped to +13 percent growth, the lowest it had been since November, which is a stark contrast to February during which time sales reached their highest point since June 2012.

"The pace of growth has slowed, likely in part down to the later timing of Mother's Day and Easter this year," said Barry Williams, the chair of the CBI Distributive Trades Survey Panel and chief merchandising officer for food at Asda, a British supermarket chain owned by Wal-Mart.

According to Reuters, analysts had predicted a slight drop from February's +37 to +28 percent growth, but the actual numbers fell rather short of these expectations. Fortunately, experts are predicting an uptick in sales for April that should bring the numbers back to about +36 percent and on par with February. RTT News reported that this would be the largest amount of month-over-month growth since December 2010, indicating that the U.K. marketplace continues to recover from the recent recession.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, March 25th, 2014 at 12:34 pm .