Western Europe

Following a marginal decline the previous year, health and beauty specialists in Germany recorded moderate value growth in 2023, mainly driven by the rising demand for beauty and personal care products. With rising overall costs in Germany,…

Beauty specialists benefitted from the continued post-pandemic return to increased time spent socialising and working outside of the home in France in 2023. Demand rose in categories like colour cosmetics, among others. Similarly, optical goods…

Health and beauty specialists in Finland is the second biggest non-grocery channel in Finland and is a category of growing importance. One of the main reasons for this growth is that pharmacy products are mostly essential. A high share of overall…

Health and beauty specialists continued to see some benefit from consumers’ return to retail shopping in Denmark in 2023. However, although the Danish economy as a whole was performing relatively well in 2023 with falling unemployment and inflation,…

Health and beauty specialists in Belgium continued to enjoy positive growth in current value terms in 2023. However, this driven mainly by inflationary pressures, as retailers, squeezed by rising input costs, were forced to raise their prices. Within…

Driven by significant price increases, overall health and beauty specialists saw strong growth in value sales in Austria in 2023, roughly at the same level as retail offline overall. Consumers' willingness to spend in this category has generally…

Within general merchandise stores, department stores accounted for significantly more value sales than variety stores in Turkey in 2023. The only major player in variety stores is German global player Tchibo, while there are three significant players…

In 2023, a year characterised by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and high inflation, Poundland was one of the more active players in general merchandise stores in the UK, placing a strong focus on pricing and expanding its product range. In March…

Action continued to record growth in current value terms in 2023, albeit at a slower pace than in 2022. Action is a chain of discounter variety stores which has benefited from the challenging economic environment with consumers coming to its stores…

General merchandise stores recorded a decline in sales in Switzerland in 2023, mainly as a result of the performance of department stores, which are often considered outdated and old-fashioned and are increasingly being replaced by shopping malls and…