Analysis and Prediction on the Top Retailers in the UK

Abstract

The inflation in the UK has been increasingly serious, reaching approximately 10%. This directly causes the rise in the price of daily-used goods, including fresh and chilled, food cupboard and bakery, and household items. The growth in living costs has cut the shopping desire for the customers, pushing them to altering their original consumption habits. It is interesting to research in the behavior of the retailers during the inflation and the downturn of the UK economy. This paper has chosen four well-known retailers in the UK, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer’s and NEXT to represent the general development of the retail industry throughout the country. To evaluate the performance of the company before and after the influence, the stock price is used to indicate the current value of the four retailers. By collecting the data from Yahoo Finance and forecasting by applying Arima model, there will be no significant upwards or downwards tendency in the near future for Sainsbury’s and NEXT, while slight fluctuations are predicted to be shown for Tesco and Marks & Spencer’s stock price.