The Pulse: Economic and political uncertainty provides a strong headwind
While sales expectations for October recovered compared to last year, and merchants’ confidence in their own business also improved year on year, their confidence in the market continued to slide, no doubt undermined by recent economic and political turbulence.
Given the turbulence, The Pulse asked merchants what they thought of the mini-budget, and how confident were they in the new Prime Minister and Chancellor on a scale of 1 to 10. Not very was the answer, with three out of 10 merchants rating them one out of 10. In Scotland, it was worse, with six in ten merchants giving them a thumbs down of one out of 10 (see slides 5 and 6).
The Pulse, by MRA Research, is a monthly tracking survey of merchants’ confidence and prospects. Telephone interviewing took place between 3rd and 6th October 2022 (4 working days).
The Pulse is a monthly trends survey that tracks builders’ merchants’ confidence and prospects over time and is produced by MRA Research, the market research division of MRA Marketing. View all reports here.
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