Placer.ai’s Q4 Quarterly Index Report presents location intelligence data for beauty & self care brands, discount & dollar stores, superstores, grocery brands, malls, fitness chains, and offices. Using yearly, quarterly, and weekly visit patterns, the report reveals how these key categories fared in 2022 and what their performance tells us about consumer behavior and brick-and-mortar retail in the new normal.
CoreLogic®, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released its latest Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI), which analyzes single-family rent price changes nationally and across major metropolitan areas. Single-family rental price increases dropped to 7.5% year over year in November, with all four tracked price tiers posting lower gains than a year earlier. November marked the seventh consecutive month of annual deceleration, and while Florida metro areas continued to post the nation’s highest rental cost gains, other Sun Belt cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas that formerly showed the highest rent increases are now at the bottom.
China’s decision to ditch its zero-Covid policy has triggered a surge in flight bookings, according to the latest data from ForwardKeys. On 7th December, Chinese authorities announced that a negative PCR test would no longer be required for air travel between provinces. Domestic flight bookings immediately surged 56% on the previous week and continued to increase 69% the following week. On 26th December, China removed all COVID-related restrictions on domestic air travel; and bookings surged again, reaching 50% of 2019’s level in the final week of the year.
Chinese-owned discount online marketplace Temu reached half as many weekly active users as the largest US fast fashion brand Shein in only three months according to Earnest’s Vela transaction data. The Pinduoduo owned newcomer to the US market achieved customer growth levels that took Shein four years and a pandemic to reach. Temu offers basement bargains for everything from Lenovo earbuds to 99 cent holiday outfits. Its market entrance comes on the heels of hyper-discounted and social media hyped fast fashion brand Shein’s rise.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 11.6 million times in December, 1.4 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of December, downloads of the top 36 quick-service restaurant apps are up 6.6 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey.
Somehow, another year is gone. 2022 was a somewhat challenging period for the multifamily industry, especially relative to an historic 2021. With 2023 now ahead, some of the defining features of last year persist, and others have begun to fade. These changes, as well as new dynamics that will emerge this year, have the industry on a path to another fascinating year on the heels of three years that will be discussed well into the future.
Sandalwood China Auto Insurance data indicates below-seasonal level car deliveries of Tesla in December at 37,723 as of Dec 25. Hangover effects from strong November delivery and weak consumer demand despite additional subsidies are likely the main culprits. Model Y continues to take the lead. 27,480 and 10, 243 units of Model Y and Model 3 were delivered respectively MTD.
With 2022 in the rear-view mirror, we checked in to see how the grocery sector is faring at the start of the new year, zooming in on two chains that are outperforming industry averages: H-E-B and Trader Joe’s. Since H-E-B is located in Texas, we focused our analysis on the Lone Star State. Despite somewhat different strategies, both chains have succeeded in garnering highly devoted and loyal customer bases, thanks in part to their focus on in-store customer experience.
Earnest Analytics Spend Index powered by Orion transaction data decelerated in December, as a deceleration in In-store more than offset a slight Online acceleration. Gyms, Workout Classes, Garden & Outdoor, and Air Travel grew fastest in the month. Active & Athleisure, Off-Price Department Stores, Footwear, Sports Gear, and Casual Dining also stood out with the fastest acceleration since November.
On January 1st, California and Washington were the latest states to introduce pay transparency laws, which require all job postings to include a pay range. In collaboration with The Economist, we look at how employers responded in New York City and Colorado when the laws were introduced, in order to understand what California and Washington can expect. To what extent do job postings now include pay ranges that are actually informative?
Despite moves by some companies to cut down on remote work, a full-time return to the office still appears unlikely. But what will remote and hybrid work patterns look like in 2023? How many people are coming into the office each day, and what are their schedules? What trends can be identified in different major cities across the country? With the new year upon us, we dove into our office index data for 2022 to get a better understanding of evolving work habits.
Consumer holiday spending measured by the Vela credit and debit card data in Earnest Analytics Spend Index (EASI) increased 5.9% YoY in 2022, a stark contrast from the significant demand growth experienced in the 2021 holiday season but relatively in-line with historical periods as multi-decade high inflation continues to benefit nominal growth. In 2022, holiday spending growth was driven by similar levels of transaction and average ticket growth, though transaction growth was much lower than pre-pandemic levels, a potential sign that inflation continues to squeeze consumer budgets.
In the spring of 2020, downtown areas became unattractive places for many people because of the emergence of COVID-19. The economic shutdown meant that urban cores lost their lifestyle value, remote work meant they lost their commuting value and physical distancing stripped them of their social value. These factors, among others, led to a flight from dense urban areas, both to the suburbs and beyond.
Until recently, luxury shopping in the US was typically concentrated in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. But now, a shift is underway as new wealth centers emerge across the country, including Sunbelt states. We took a closer look at some of these markets to see how demographic changes are creating new retail opportunities and understand what may lie ahead for the brick-and-mortar luxury sector.
The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI), issued by Dodge Construction Network, improved 6.6% (2000=100) in December to 222.2 from the revised November reading of 208.3. In December, the commercial component of the DMI rose 8.4%, and the institutional component ticked up 2.7%. “One of the key construction storylines for 2022 was the return of enthusiasm and optimism in prospects for nonresidential growth,” stated Richard Branch, chief economist for Dodge Construction Network.
HM.B-OME’s most recent sales report for 4Q2022, which ended in November, raised concerns that the Swedish fast fashion company isn’t moving fast enough to keep up with established rivals like Zara and newer entrants like Shein. In today’s Insight Flash, we take advantage of our newly launched Continental European data – tracking spend in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain – to understand the company’s performance across continents, digging into brand trends and how their higher priced brands are faring around the world.
Last year (2022) marked a significant opening up of retail as the wider landscape enjoyed the first true post-pandemic period. Yet, the upside of finally moving beyond pandemic-driven limitations was quickly offset by a myriad of economic challenges including inflation and high gas prices. Analyzing our Mall Indexes over the past year has shown the impressive resilience of top-tier malls across the three sub-segments throughout the year.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted consumer spending patterns in countless ways, driving us away from crowded venues and retail stores towards at-home alternatives such as delivery and e-commerce services. Our paper uncovers the short- and long-term impacts of COVID across 12 categories, revealing not only the effects of the pandemic immediately after its onset, but how those effects have evolved as we move into the “new normal.” We do so by first predicting what category-level activity would have been in the absence of the pandemic in these 12 categories, then comparing what consumers actually spent to this “no-pandemic baseline.”
Welcome to the first Apartment List National Rent Report of 2023. Our national index fell by 0.8 percent over the course of December, marking the fourth straight month-over-month decline. The timing of this cooldown in the rental market is consistent with the typical seasonal trend, but its magnitude has been notably sharper than what we’ve seen in the past. This suggests that the recent swing to falling rents is reflective of a broader shift in market conditions beyond seasonality alone.
Chinese ecommerce giant Shein has experienced a meteoric rise in the U.S. fast fashion market, with its sales and market share overtaking competitors such as H&M, Fashion Nova, Forever 21, ASOS, and Zara during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using U.S. consumer spending data, we analyzed how Shein’s U.S. sales have boomed over the past few years, as well as how other fast fashion companies have fared.
