Retail industry of UK has been one of the most growing industries over Dissertation

Retail industry of UK has been one of the most growing industries over the years - Dissertation Example Introduction: 17 3.2. Research Purpose: 17 3.3. Research Strategy and Method: 18 3.4. Research Design: 19 3.5. Data Collection: 19 3.6. Methods and Tools used for Collecting Data: 20 3.7. Analysis Techniques: 20 3.8. Validity and Reliability of the Research: 25 3.9. Ethical Considerations: 26 3.10. Summary: 26 4. ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 27 4.1. Introduction 27 4.2. Financial ratios 27 4.2.1. Profitability Ratios 28 4.2.2. Liquidity Ratios 39 4.2.3. Activity Ratios or Efficiency Ratios 47 4.2.4. Leverage Ratios 51 4.2.5. Market Ratios 57 5. CONCLUSION 63 5.1. Summary of the findings 63 5.2. Recommendations 65 5.3. Lessons learnt from the study 66 5.4. Limitations 67 5.5. Further research 67 1. introduction 1.1. Background Of The Study Retail industry of UK has been one of the most growing industries over the years, specifically the food retail industry. Because of recession, the overall world economy was not growing despite of that, food retail industry has been one of the industries wh ich reported considerable amount of growth. The food retail industry of UK has a long and solid history. During the fifties and sixties the concept of supermarkets and self service shops became popular; this has been marked as the starting of retail industry in the United Kingdom (Hamlett, Alexander, Bailey, & Shaw, 2008). Despite of the fact that the UK economy was going through recession, the overall sales of the industry had increased in 2009 as it reached a figure of over ?285billion. It has been estimated that this figure will further increase in the years to come. Also with the world economy and UK economy recovers itself from recession, retail industry would be one of the most beneficial industries as this would further increase the total revenue of the firms in the industry (The Scottish Government, 2010). By the end of 2010, the total retail units in the kingdom were approximately 286,000 (Arch, 2010). The food retail industry is an important industry for the UK economy as over the years it has been able to contribute a lot to GDP of the country. In addition to this, food retail industry is a significant one for United Kingdom economy as it has been able to consume considerable portion of the employment. According to a report, there are more than half a million people working in the industry representing almost 13% of the total workforce of United Kingdom. Food retail industry consumed more than 12,750 permanent jobs throughout 2010 which represents an annual growth of 2.1% in the jobs of food retail industry from the year 2009 (The Scottish Government, 2010). There has been an increasing trend of online shopping for people in the UK and this has attracted more people to start online businesses. There are more than 150,000 online retail businesses in United Kingdom and more than 600,000 people are employed because of e-retail industry either directly or indirectly. At present, the online retail business contributes only 7% of the total retail industry revenues (Experian Hitwise, 2008), however it has been predicted that the contribution from online business would further improve with the passage of time. The total sales of online retail industry equalled ?2.8 billion from December, 2009 to December, 2010 i.e. in a year the total sales of the industry was equal to ?2.8 billion (Internet Retailer, 2011). Tesco is the market leader in the UK food retail industry for years and it has been dominating the market with market share of almost 31% (Tesco, 2011). Tesco is