1. 2014 Answering Practices Survey of CBI Distributive Trades Survey respondents our ‘Survey of Surveys’
Presented by Jonathan Wood – Head of CBI Survey Management Group and Answering Practices project sponsor
Developed by mia Andersson – senior policy advisor, economic analysis
Ec BCS workshop – november 13th 2014

2. Distributive Trades Survey
Launched in July 1983 – mixed mode
Covers the retail, wholesale distribution and motor trades sectors
4 questions in monthly survey, covering sales volumes, orders placed upon suppliers, sales for the time of year, stocks and internet sales.
Additional questions in quarterly surveys (Feb, May, Aug, Nov) on imports, prices, employment, investment and the business situation and internet sales.
Around 130 respondents each month.
Data from the survey is supplied to the European Commission (EC).
The EC also have their own questions embedded in the survey.
The survey celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2013
Launched in July 1983 – mixed mode of postal, fax, e-capture, phone
Covers the retail, wholesale distribution and motor trades sectors
Monthly survey covers four questions on sales volumes, orders placed upon suppliers, sales for the time of year, stock adequacy and internet sales.
Additional questions feature in the quarterly survey, covering imports, average selling prices, employment, investment intentions, the overall business situation and internet sales. Quarterly surveys are conducted every February, May, August and November.
Survey receives approximately 130 respondents each month.
The CBI has a long standing arrangement with the European Commission (EC) to supply harmonised data from the conventional questions published in the DTS.
The EC also has several questions of its own - referring to the ‘trend’ over the past three months - embedded within the DTS survey. The data supplied to the EC is included in their monthly assessment of the European economy.
The survey celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2013 – see Pearl of Wisdom link at rear of ppt

3. DTS Answering Practices Survey
Conducted in order to maximise understanding of how respondents answer the DTS
Fourth Answering Practices Survey undertaken for the DTS.
Conducted between 14th May and 16th June 2014.
85 responses – approximately 65% of the usual response rate.
Developed in consultation with the Bank of England, Monetary Analysis Division
1. Conducted in order to maximise understanding of how respondents answer the DTS, and thus help users appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the survey. A long standing CBI survey tradition. Please do contact me if you would like to receive any present or past APS materials.
2. Fourth APS (previously in 1990, 1999 and 2008).
3. Conducted between 14th May and 16th June 2014.
4. 85 responses, equating to approximately 65% of the usual response rate to the DTS.
5. Developed in consultation with the Bank of England, Monetary Analysis Division
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4. Who usually completes the DTS survey questionnaire?
Responses usually completed at a fairly senior level:
Chairman/MD/CEO: 46%
Functional Director: 16%
Planning and strategy director: 1%
Manager/Stock controller:4%
Owner/Partner: 4%
General manager/company secretary/accountant: 17%
Other: 12%
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5. At what level are the survey results used in your company?
And results utilised at most levels in a company (but more so at CEO/director-level):
Chairman: 46%
Director of function: 34%
Planning and strategy director: 14%
Other: 8%
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6. Volume of sales 1
What do you define as the reference period for comparison of year-on-year sales volumes?
Question one of the DTS asks respondents to state the movement in their volume of sales relative to the same month a year ago. From the results of the Answering Practices Survey, it was clear that most respondents strongly adhere to providing a year-on-year comparison. However, there is some variation in the time period used to make this comparison.
The APS asked respondents to define their reference period with which they make this comparison, given that the survey period for each month’s DTS broadly covers the first two weeks of each calendar month.
The majority of retailers (39%) use sales for the previous calendar month. Most (42%) wholesalers use sales in the four weeks up to the point of answering the survey.
When compared with the previous APS conducted 2008, the majority of retailers were answering with respect to the survey month to date, and a forecast for the remainder of the period (which is more desirable).
However, a third of retailers still respond in this fashion.
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7. Volume of sales 2
Is any adjustment made for sales generated from additional selling space?
The APS showed that most retail and wholesale respondents do not adjust for sales generated from additional selling space, when comparing sales volumes to a year ago. Retail (78%) and wholesale (92%).
This suggests that the results from the DTS are a good reflection of total sales, which is what the survey is seeking to measure - rather than like-for-like sales.
A particularly largely increase in “no” responses in wholesaling, relative to 2008, which is encouraging. From (58%) to (92%).
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8. Volume of sales 3 Is any adjustment made for seasonal variations?
Almost no survey participants adjust for seasonal variations in their trend in sales volumes when responding to the survey (94% of retailers and 75% of wholesalers replied ‘no’).
This is unsurprising, given that Q1 of the DTS does not ask respondents to do this; it is assumed that providing a year-on-year comparison of sales volumes will mitigate any seasonal effects.
In a newly developed question, we also asked if respondents make adjustments for trading days, unseasonal weather or one-off events, such as major sports events, and similarly, almost none make such adjustments.
This highlights the need for caution regarding events that are neither regular nor fall in the same month each year, which may bias the DTS annual comparison of sales, e.g. Easter or the World Cup.
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9. Volume of sales 4 Do you sell products outside of the UK?
Of the respondents to the APS that sell products outside of the UK, the majority of wholesalers (66%) do so, and almost all of these (97%) include these in their assessment of sales volumes for the DTS. This suggests that the survey balances in this sector would correspond significantly with changes in global sales volumes.
By contrast, most retailers (90%) do not include sales made abroad in their responses; only 37% sell outside the UK and the vast majority exclude foreign sales from their responses. This suggests that any trend in retail sales volumes in the DTS would more broadly reflect changes in domestic retail sales.
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10. Volumes of sales and orders
With reference to expected sales volumes and orders placed on suppliers, do these expectations reflect?
Questions 1 and 2 of the DTS also ask respondents to cite their expectations for the next month, regarding the trend in sales volumes and orders placed upon suppliers respectively on a year ago.
For a sizeable majority of wholesalers (37%), these expectations reflect a combination of both typical sales & orders for the time of year, and recent months’ trading. However, a significant proportion of wholesalers (26%) use a subjective assessment.
Among retailers 47% said expectations reflect typical sales/orders for the time of year, while 22% use recent month’s trading as a reference point. 18% use a combination of both.
The share relying on solely typical sales/orders has risen since 2008 (29%), while (encouragingly) the share using a subjective assessment has fallen (from17% to 6%).
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11. EC Questions Interpretation of ‘trend over the past three months’
The European Commission’s own questions embedded within the DTS survey refer to sales volumes, orders placed upon suppliers, prices and employment. They ask respondents to describe the trend over both the past three months and the next three months (in contrast to the CBI’s own questions, which tend to ask about year-on-year trends).
It is clear that most respondents in both retail (63%) and wholesale (62%) answer these questions in terms of the change between the past three months and the same three month period a year ago. This suggests that the EC’s questions are interpreted in broadly the same way as the DTS ones that ask for a year-on-year comparison.
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12. EC Questions 2
Interpretation of ‘trend over the past three months’ since 2008
Since the last DTS APS was conducted in 2008, there has been in a slight shift in retailers response. In 2008 (18%) of retailers compared the past three months compared to the previous three months, now up to 25% in the most recent APS.
Wholesalers reported a similar change, (9%) in 2008, increasing to (17%) in 2014.
We anticipate this general trend continuing, especially since the recent DG ECFIN questionnaire wording/formation harmonization exercise in the spring of this year.
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13. Volume of sales for the time of year
How do you assess sales volumes as being ‘average for the time of year’?
Question 3 of the DTS asks respondents whether their sales are ‘good’, ‘average’ or ‘poor’ for the time of year. This would ideally involve participants making comparisons with a typical month based on average sales over at least a couple of years.
The definition of ‘average for the time of year’ varies between the different sub-sectors. The majority of retailers (57%) look at sales for the month over a number of years (i.e. as we would prefer).
Greater variation in responses among wholesaling: while a good number of wholesalers (31%) also define ‘average for the time of year’ in this manner, most (36%) look last year’s sales of the month.
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14. Volume of stocks How do you assess the ‘adequacy’ of stocks?
Respondents are asked whether their volume of stocks are ‘too high’, ‘adequate’ or ‘too low’ in relation to expected demand.
The APS sought to find out what survey participants considered to be adequate ‘in relation to expected demand’. While it is clear that most respondents (29% retail, 52% wholesale) from each sub-sector use a combination of current and expected sales to assess stock adequacy, there is considerable variation in responses in this regard, particularly within retail.
For example, a sizeable proportion of both retailers (30%) and wholesalers (22%) use only current sales as an assessment. Almost a fifth of retailers (19%) also use past levels of stocks/historical average as a reference point.
The variation in responses is likely a reflection of a lack of clarity regarding how ‘in relation to expected demand’ is defined. This is something we will seek to find clarity on, in the next DTS APS.
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15. Imports
How do you assess whether the proportion of deliveries from suppliers accounted for by imports is more/less/the same?
In the quarterly survey, companies are asked whether the current proportion of deliveries accounted for by imports has increased or decreased from a year earlier.
A large proportion of retailers (41%) and wholesalers (58%) still use a subjective assessment in order to measure this.
But encouragingly, the % that employ a quantitative procedure (retail=34%; wholesale=39%) has risen since the 2008 APS (29% and 28% respectively).
But variation in terms of what this quantitative procedure is based on:
Retail: a mixture of “value of deliveries” and “other”
Wholesale: a mixture of volume and value of deliveries.
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16. Prices 1 How do you compare the change in prices on a year ago?
The DTS asks retailers how their average selling prices compare with those in the same month a year ago.
Most wholesalers (72%) said that they responded with respect to prices prevailing at the time of answering the survey.
But there was a largely even split among retail – 51% employ this option, while 49% use average price changes over a 12 month period.
Marked shift from 2008:
In retail, most used prices prevailing at the time of answering (68%)
In contrast, most wholesalers (59%) used average price changes over the past year
Unclear why these shifts have occurred
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17. Prices 2
How do you assess the change in ‘average selling prices’ of your products?
In assessing the change in their average selling prices:
The overwhelming majority of retailers use some form of average of individual prices (40% using a weighted average, and 30% using a simple average). Similarly, wholesalers tend to use average prices (45% weighted, 10% simple). This is arguably a more accurate appraisal of selling prices, so this is encouraging
Furthermore, compared with the 2008 survey, the use of average prices is now much more prevalent – in the last survey 64% of retailers and 51% of wholesalers simply used a subjective assessment.
Fewer retailers (20%) and wholesalers (33%) are now using subjective assessments.
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18. Employment
How do you determine your response referring to total numbers employed?
Survey participants are also asked to compare their level of employment with the same month a year ago.
The vast majority (69% retail; 92% wholesale) use a simple sum of the numbers of full-time and part-time employees to determine their responses. Relatively fewer use a weighted method or subjective assessment.
Suggests greater consistency and clarity when comparing survey balances on employment across the different sub-sectors.
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19. Prices and employment
Interpretations of expectations for the month ahead
The questions in the DTS on both average selling prices and employment also ask respondents to report their expectations for the month ahead.
An overwhelming proportion of retailers (85%) answer this in the manner intended.
However, there is somewhat of a split between those wholesalers answering with respect to 1 month ahead (33%) and 2 months ahead (29%) and three months ahead (26%).
The vast majority of respondents in all three also compare employment/prices with the same period one year earlier, as intended, although 22% of wholesalers made the comparison based on more recent trends.
This suggests that the expectations balances for prices and employment in retail are providing a somewhat more short-term outlook than those for the wholesale sector; however, divisions in responses between the latter two make it unclear as to what extent this is prevalent.
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20. Sales and prices
When answering Q1 (volume of sales) and Q6 (average selling prices), what range of movement (up or down) would you regard as falling within the reply ‘the same’?
The DTS APS 2014 picked up a change in interpretation of movements regarded as “the same” since the previous APS in 2008.
For Q1 (volume of sales), over half regard movements of between % as “the same”. This contrasts with 2008, when only a third of respondents viewed % as “the same”.
A similar pattern is seen in the prices question (Q6).
This suggests that respondents are more sensitive to small changes in growth rates than previously.
However, this varies by question – for example, the range of growth rates regarded as “the same” seems to have widened for orders and employment.
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21. Investment intentions
What proportion of your total capital spending in a year is accounted for by:
Participants are asked whether they expect to authorise more, less or the same amount of capital expenditure in the coming year relative to the previous one.
The APS sought to find out what this capital expenditure consists of. On average, spending on land and buildings makes up 41% of capital expenditure among retail-sector respondents. However, vehicles and machinery make up the dominant proportion of investment in wholesale (47%) and motor trades (62%).
Interestingly, all three sub-sectors spend a similar proportion on IT (27-30%).
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22. Business situation 1
When asked about business situation prospects, do you respond in terms of:
When asked about the business situation, most respondents answer in terms of three months ahead (74% retail; 76% wholesale; 91% motor trades). Indicates strong adherence to the question being asked.
We also asked which factors most influence sentiment. Recent trends in sales and orders or “other factors” cited to be among the most important factors in all three sub-sectors.
This, along with consideration of similar time horizons in responses, aids clarity in terms of cross-sector comparison of business sentiment.
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23. Business situation 2
Is your assessment of business prospects ahead compared to:
However, there is more variation in answers regarding what time period respondents’ assessment of business prospects is compared to.
There is slight split between retailers that report sentiment relative to the time of answering the survey (48%) and relative to the past three months (30%).
Most wholesalers compare business prospects with the past three months (56%).
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24. Internet sales question
Do you sell goods over the internet?
The majority of retailers (57%) sell goods over the internet whereas the opposite is true for wholesalers (72%)
Within retailing, 40% said that internet sales accounted for between 1% and 10% of the total –(15% said this was the case five years ago). 12% said that internet sales comprised above 10% of the total
Internet retailing is only expected to grow further: In five years’ time, 21% expect sales to be above 10% of total sales. So the introduction of the internet sales question (January 2014) is a timely way to capture these trends.
Responses indicate that internet sales made outside the UK account are either excluded from responses, or account for a small share of total sales.
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25. Summary
Answering Practices Survey highlights issues that should be considered in interpreting results of the Distributive Trades Survey.
Some variation in responses to most questions.
Often a split between Retail/Wholesale.
Some questions may benefit from better clarification – subject to further internal assessment.
However, broad consistency in responses for some questions.
Survey participants continue to support and actively respond to these extensive primary research exercises
Answering Practices Surveys serve to highlight issues that the analyst should be aware of when interpreting the DTS; for example, differences in interpretations of “trends” on a year ago, over the past 3 months, etc.
The influences behind and rationale for responses to the DTS vary between different sub-sectors for most questions. As well as some intra-sector variation, there appears to be some split between Retail/Wholesale and Motor Trades, or Retail/Motor Trades and Wholesale, possibly due to operational differences between each sector (we’ve mostly focused on retail and wholesale here).
However, consistency in responses to some questions, e.g. business situation, employment
Survey participants continue to support and actively respond to these extensive primary research exercises
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26. Thank you
Thanks to Christian Gayer and Ecfin colleagues for their support and this opportunity to present our answering practices surveys – these ‘Survey of Surveys’
Thanks to Rebecca Wong, CBI Survey Operations and Research Executive for leading the project and to Nicola Grimwood and Chris Taylor for their key support
Thanks to CBI Senior Policy Adviser, Mia Andersson for developing this analytical presentation and to her colleagues Alpesh Paleja and Ben Jones for their invaluable support and input
Special thanks to Garry Young and colleagues at the Bank of England, Monetary Analysis Division for their valued input and support of these answering practices surveys
And especial thanks to Alan Joy, our statistical and analytical expert for his key contribution to developing and realizing this survey data
30th Anniversary of the CBI’s DTS Survey Pearl of wisdom link
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27. Jonathan Wood Head of CBI Survey Management Group
Contact us
Jonathan Wood
Head of CBI Survey Management Group e:
t: +44 (0) m: e:
t: +44 (0)