Proactive Investors - British retailers benefited from the better weather last month to record a further improvement in sales growth, with clothing and gardening products seeing strong demand.
Total sales volumes in August were up 1.0% on a year ago, according to figures from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG, improving from the 0.5% growth seen in July and the three-month average of 0.4%.
Food sales were up 2.9% over the three months to August, while non-food sales decreased 1.7%.
For August, food sales rose versus last year but non-food was in decline, despite high street clothing sales growing for the second month in a row.
Sports and travel equipment, and food & drink also saw positive sales growth during the summer period.
Online non-food sales increased by 1.5% in August, an improvement on three-month average growth of 0.3% and an average decline of 1.8% over the past 12 months.
“Despite summer finally making an appearance, and a slight uptick in consumer confidence, shoppers did not catch-up their spending during August, with total sales growth of only 1% reflecting the challenging retail environment that is likely to dominate for the rest of this year," said Linda Ellett, KPMG's UK head of consumer, retail & leisure.
Consumer sentiment is gradually starting to improve, Ellett added, but there is "some nervousness" among households about potential tax rises and winter energy costs.
"The fragile nature of consumer confidence means shoppers will continue to be driven by price and value, moving from brand to brand to find the best price benefit and we are likely to see retailers using promotional activity to seek to win at this.
"As green shoots of growth start to appear, those retailers looking to seize on slowly returning consumer confidence will need to demonstrate best value for money, as well as tap in to the 'experience' factor as consumers focus their discretionary spend on having fun or experiences over owning more ‘stuff’."
Economist Rob Wood at Pantheon Macroeconomics said better weather boosted retail sales, noting that the average temperature was 0.5% above average, "but the underlying trend remains one of gradually improving retail sales volumes growth as inflation slows and rising real incomes boost consumer spending".
He said the improvement in the BRC-KPMG data "should translate into strengthening volumes growth as goods price inflation has been slowing", with the BRC shop price index having fallen 0.3% year-over-year in August compared to a rise of 1.4% on average in the first half of the year.
"Accordingly, after deflating and seasonally adjusting the BRC data we judge that they are consistent with a 0.5% month-to-month rise in the official measure of retail sales volumes in August."