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Weather has the biggest influence on consumer behaviour after the economy, according to the British Retail Consortium. Indeed, when it was reported that the UK economy failed to grow in April, pundits blamed the wet weather - asserting that, ‘rain in April weighed on growth’. *
There is no doubt that whether it rains or shines affects consumer behaviour – their purchase method, mood and product choice. On a basic level, when the sun shines, we tend to spend more.
evoBackOffice user, Goran Raven of Budgens in Essex says,
"In May we had a sunny period of about 10 days and the shop was 22% above where we were at that time last year."
Luckily for retailers, weather-driven demand can be predicted quite accurately. For instance, when temperatures in the UK go beyond 18 degrees, retailers know there will be around a 22% increase in fizzy drink sales. Likewise, sales of soup increase as the temperature falls.
With this in mind, it’s critical that retailers get a handle on what the weather is doing - easier said than done with the infamously changeable British weather.
To support our retailers in getting to grips with weather-driven demand, we added a Met Office API driven Weather Widget to our evoBackOffice dashboard. Goran of Raven's Budgens refers to it daily.
“The weather widget in MADIC UK’s back office is invaluable. It means that we can order BBQ and other ‘sunshine’ products with confidence, as sales are so weather dependent.”
Of course, there’s much more to our evoBackOffice dashboard than the weather! From margin alerts to wastage summaries, it’s full of business-critical information in an easily digestible form. Goran says,
“The waste tiles in the latest version of evoBackOffice are brilliant. They put products in front of you that are losing money, that you otherwise may not notice.”
*https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clmmvnpr8n8o
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