The Uks consumer culture is ever evolving, it is one that will clearly refuse to roll over and die, even amid a recession, spending remained strong throughout the downturn in 2008-2009 and continues to rise amid a culture of government spending cuts and a slow to recover job market. So what is it about us Brits that makes us spend spend spend? The culture of shopping has shifted in the past ten years. We used to see thriving, small local business and shops selling goods to friendly neighborhood customers. This hardly happens anyone, especially in big cities. What we have seen is a shift in the retail market from being located in town and city centers, to migrating out of built up areas.
This means large businesses can build stores with huge floor space, maximising economy, of course having a large amount of goods delivered to one store is cheaper than having stock distributed to many, smaller locations. Supermarkets are key culprits of this with key, flagship stores often located a few miles out of the town centre. Electrical retailers are no different. Whereas once you may have had a television retailer, a lighting retailer and a home appliances retailer, all of them found scattered around city centres and even small villages, these products are now all grouped together under the 'electrical' tag.
Places like Currys and PC World have diversified over the years and sell anything from a 50 inch plasma television to Bosch Washing machines and Siemens appliances. While this may be excellent for these big retailers as they bully smaller businesses out of the market place, the consumer ultimately suffers, not on price perhaps, the Currys of this world can afford to be extremely competitive, but their downfall is staff product knowledge. A worker in a small home appliances retailer would know everything there is to know about the latest Bosch dishwashers, staff in big chain stores barely know their laptops from their laser printers.
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