Isolating the impact of this year’s ‘summer of sport’ from the weather on sales performance requires sophisticated modelling techniques.
Smart marketers, especially those investing in media or in-store promotions, will use marketing mix studies and price and promotion analysis to measure the return on investment. However, high-level analysis can also offer valuable insights to better understand performance and improve future planning.
While the Euros and the Paris Olympics will be key highlights of summer 2024, it is the weather that will have had the most significant and widespread impact on grocery sales performance.
Less sun, less fun
This summer has been cooler and less sunny compared to both last year and the long-term-average. June showed the biggest year-on-year differences, with almost 28% less sunshine and temperatures 18% cooler than the same month last year. Overall, from June to August, temperatures were 6.5% lower on average, and there was 8.2% less sunshine.
As a result, we used less sunscreen, ate less ice cream and drank less fizzy drinks compared to last year. The weekly performance of these categories closely followed the weekly weather trends, and sales were unable to recover from a poor performance in June across the rest of the summer. By the end of the season, ice cream volume sales were down 1.6%, sunscreen down 5.9% and carbonates down 0.2% versus last year.
Bottled water bucked the trend somewhat. Volumes remained buoyant across the summer, boosted by shoppers sourcing cheaper drinks as the cost of living pressure persisted. Counterintuitively, hayfever remedies were unaffected by the cooler weather. In fact, volumes soared, increasing by 3.7% year on year, as the sporty summer encouraged people to get active outdoors.
Weather influences not just what we buy and how much, but also where we shop. For weather-sensitive categories, convenience store sales closely follow year-on-year weather trends. As a result, the only time the convenience channel saw a big spike in carbonate sales this summer was during the week ending 20 July – coinciding with the best week of summer weather compared to last year.
Euros and Olympics
The same pattern applies to beer and cider, with one exception: the impact of this year’s summer of sport. According to Barb, 52 million viewers tuned in to watch England’s four Euro knock-out games, while the Olympics attracted 93 million viewers throughout its duration.
The Euros appear to have boosted beer and cider sales, with volumes up 4.1% year on year in the four weeks ending 13 July 2024. By contrast, carbonates declined 1.2% in volume over the same period. However, the rise in beer and cider volumes was also driven by increased promotional investment over the same period, making it impossible to isolate the specific impact of the European football competition.
The impact of the Olympics is even less clear-cut and harder to pinpoint. Strong volume growth during the week ending 3 August coincided with one of the few weeks of good weather this summer compared to last year, making it difficult to attribute the increase solely to the event.
The broader picture is clear enough, with weather undoubtedly playing a significant role in impacting year-on-year sales performance. But for marketers keen to untangle the impact of weather from other factors such as media, promotions, or sports events, a more analytical approach is necessary to make definitive decisions going forward.
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