Daily Research News Online no. 3034 - A Decade of British Life

A Decade of British Life

April 1 2004

A second look at the Mintel British Lifestyles survey, showing ten year trends in spending / activity in the areas of housing and pensions, telephone and internet banking, food and health, travel and clothing.

The British spend some £400 billion per annum on housing and finance. This is 45% of their total spend, up from 39% ten years ago. As consumers have become wealthier, they have invested more in property, pensions and insuring their lives and their increasing array of possessions.

Telephone and Internet banking have become established means of managing this greater wealth: the proportion of current and instant access savings accounts accessible by telephone has risen from 18% to 28% in five years, while obviously online access was tiny five years ago (0.4 million had access), whereas it is now very common (17.2 million).

Total expenditure on housing more than doubled between 1993 and 2003, from £106 billion to £232 billion - most of this has come in the last five years (an 87% rise). Mintel does not anticipate a crash in the housing market: 'the market is set to continue to rise, but at a more measured pace ... as the rest of the country catches up with the South East', explains Peter Ayton. The average house price in the UK has risen 139% from £65,000 to around £153,000. Regions outside the South East have begun to catch up, with 20% rises in the last year in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, the South West and the North.

The value of new pension premiums has fallen from £3,352m in 2002 to £2,876m in 2003, reflecting tough times for pensions in particular, unstable share prices and the general rise of the spending mentality. Overall consumer income increased by 65% over the past decade to more than £900 billion but consumer spending grew even faster (73%). The proportion of money saved as a percentage of personal disposable income (PDI) has fallen from more than 10% to around 5.5% in 2003 (slightly less in 2002). Net consumer debt has risen by 624% from £2.63 billion in 1993 (a particularly low year) to a peak of £21m in 2002 and £19.07 billion last year.

Diet and health trends highlighted in the report include the growth of OTC medicine - the OTC market has grown by a massive 71% over the past ten years and there has been an accompanying fall in visits to the doctor; the rise of convenience foods (the sector has grown by an impressive 70% over the past 10 years to almost £17 billion in 2003, almost a third (32%) of the total spend on food); and the boom in eating out - more than £25 billion was spent on it in 2003 - 60% more than in 1993. Today some 80% of adults eat take-away meals, with one in six (17%) eating them at least once a week.

Travel has also seen rapid changes, often associated, once again, with the desire for flexibility and convenience - for example not having to stay 7 or 14 nights exactly and not having to get up at 4 in the morning to catch a plane. In 2003 an impressive one in three (32%) people who booked a holiday did so over the Internet. Total spend on domestic and overseas holidays, air-fares and sea-fares broke the £50 billion barrier in 2003, almost doubling from £27.8 billion ten years earlier. Overseas travel is the faster growing market, having more than doubled in the past ten years, but still represents less than half of the total - just over £20 billion.

'Losers' are identified as clothing and in-home food and drink. Spend on clothing has declined in percentage terms from 4.7% ten years ago to 3.9%. The main reason for this, says Mintel, has been the extremely low price rises - indeed since 1998 prices have actually fallen by 16%. This has led to the troubles of some high street retailers and the rise of the discounters. Similarly, spending on in-home food, drink and tobacco has grown much less than other sectors - prices have risen by less than the rate of inflation and competition is mainly focused on price - with many leading suppliers boasting of how their prices are lower than a year ago.

'Winners' highlighted by the report include convenience foods and fast food, as above, but also health and fitness, cinema (despite the rise of pay channels showing the latest releases), toys and games, and sports goods, all facets of the pursuit of leisure and the use of free time which forms the main theme of the report.

Mintel's web site is at www.mintel.com