Christmas Overview 2018 – Confectionery – Retail Report

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What's inside?

This seasonal best practice report showcases Christmas Confectionery seasonal execution across major UK supermarkets in 2018.

  • Comprehensive insights into retailer execution of Christmas confectionery promotions, signage and seasonal product innovation.
  • Analysis of merchandising techniques across premium chocolate, advent calendars and festive gifting ranges.
  • Overview of promotional strategies, including multi-buy offers, seasonal displays and premium own-label selections.
  • Highest quality imagery, captured by Steve Dresser, offering market-leading intelligence into UK seasonal execution and customer engagement.
  • Focused on the customer perspective, this report highlights how retailers enhanced festive confectionery merchandising to drive seasonal sales.

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What you'll get

Christmas is a major sales period for confectionery, with retailers focusing on premium chocolate, advent calendars and seasonal gifting assortments. Supermarkets leverage standout merchandising, own-label innovation and high-impact promotions to attract festive shoppers.

This report highlights best practice insights from the Christmas 2018 retail season, showcasing how Aldi, Lidl, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose executed compelling confectionery strategies. Retailers used branded partnerships, own-label development and premium packaging to elevate seasonal offerings.

How did retailers approach Christmas Confectionery in 2018?

Retailers implemented multi-buy promotions, premium product tiers and innovative advent calendar selections. Notable trends included the growth of luxury chocolate collections, alcohol-infused confectionery and festive-themed gifting products. The report captures the best in-store executions through high-quality images, providing valuable insights into seasonal confectionery merchandising.

“His knowledge, ideas and suggestions, backed up with detailed reports, were shared in a meaningful, practical way that assisted us to improve our store operations for the benefit of our members, whilst also improving ways of working for colleagues.”
Mark Cox, CEO, The Channel Islands Co-op

What you get with a Grocery Insight report

Insights, observations analysis and expert perspectives on what’s happening in retail.

High quality blur-free photos showing you what customers see in store.

Exclusive retail insights only available through our reports store

Expert perspectives and recommendations to drive sales.

Time and cost savings, by us visiting stores and collating findings on your behalf.

Inspiration, ideas and actionable next steps towards retail greatness.

Frequently Asked Questions

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We offer two report editions which are ‘Photography Reports’ and ‘Insight & Commentary Reports’. 

Photography Reports are photographs only, without any insight or commentary. These will give you a visual insight into the topic you are interested in, with real-world photography from our store visits.

Insight & Commentary Reports are photographs combined with written commentary by Steve Dresser. This gives you expert insight and perspective to add value to your reports. Deepen your understanding and knowledge with written commentary that will help you get the most out of your reports. 

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Broadly speaking, we have two categories of reports. We produce reports on our store visits, which include insight, analysis and imagery from notable and concept stores. We also produce a full end-to-end view on key seasonal events with the most detailed perspective available in the market today. We will produce further reports on emerging trends in the industry if we feel that such reports would generate value for our clients.

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"The man supermarket CEO's turn to" - BBC

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