January 15th, 2024, Shinmin Bali
British high street fashion retailer, Next, has raised its profit forecast following a better-than-expected holiday season. This comes at a time when consumers work with tight household budgets and are just emerging from one of the most expensive times of the year.
What does YouGov data tell us about the brand’s recent months?
According to BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily - Next's Current Customer score saw an upswing in the last couple of months.
In our observation period from 1 November 2023 to 3 January 2024, and as you’d expect in the critical pre-Christmas period, the high street retailer’s Current Customer score rose from 14.9% to 17.6%. That’s almost a three-percentage point jump in two short months.
Its Buzz score - which measures whether consumers are hearing more positive or negative things about the brands - grew too. It is up by two points in our observation period, from a net score of 8 to 10.
But who is driving the Current Customer score up - generating full-price sales in the nine weeks leading up to 30 December?
Shoppers aged 25-39 years old have been most enthusiastic in purchasing from Next. In the observed period, the score for this age group improved from 16.5% to 22.2% - a 5.7 percentage point increase.
The youngest of all, ages 18 to 24 years old, drove the score up for the retailer from 12.3% to 15.5% - a 3.2-point jump.
Those aged 40-54 years appear to have been less keen on the brand as the scores have dipped by 1.5 points in this period.
Scores for those aged 55 and above rose from 11.5% to 14.3% - up by 2.8 points.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Next’s Current Customer score is based on the question: Have you purchased clothing from any of the following clothing stores or brands in the past 3 months and delivered as a percentage. For the first chart, scores are based on an average daily sample size of 1759 UK adults between 1 November, 2023 and 3 January, 2024. For the second chart, scores are based on an average daily sample size ranging between 143 and 680 UK adults for the same period. Figures are based on a four-week moving average.
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