July 2012
Featured in this insight: Charity & not-for-profit, Consumer goods & FMCG , Retail
Survey uncovers British attitude to shopping at charity outlets: A survey of UK shoppers’ attitudes to charity shops conducted by the University of West England has revealed that men generally shun these types of retail outlets, even though they don’t exactly know why.
Presented at the annual Charity Retail Association conference, the findings covered sample research from Liverpool, Glasgow, Oxford and the Isle of Man.
In order to get a wide demographic that included respondents who may not use charity shops, the study involved 58 interviews with charity shop managers, 278 responses from charity shop volunteers and 382 from High Street consumers, rather than shoppers who were actually inside a charity shop.
Avril Maddrell at the University of West England commented: “A high proportion of those who do not use charity shops are men. But why not? This is crucial information about why people don’t go into charity shops. The more common reason, accounting for a third of responses, was ‘don’t know, never thought about it.’ That tells us something about getting people over the threshold. Many say ‘I don’t but my wife/partner does’ – again, a gender imbalance.”
Maddrell added: “Surprisingly, supporting the charitable cause was identified in third place. Recycling came through on top, with 51% of people saying that they’re motivated to donate their goods to charity shops for this reason. To me, this really marks a significant change within attitudes of the last ten years, and also reflects the work of the sector, including the recent campaign ‘Donate, Don’t Dump’.”
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