In euro-denominated terms, consumer spending on electrical goods across the countries covered by this report (excluding Switzerland) fell by an estimated 0.3% in aggregate in 2011.

Across many countries, the decline is believed to have been weighted towards the last nine months of 2011 as the implications of the Eurozone crisis dented consumer confidence.

Mintel forecasts that spending on electrical goods will increase by 0.8% in aggregate in 2012 – but this is against relatively weak comparatives and growth is expected to pick up only gradually across the year.

This report covers the 19 leading economies of Europe. In total these countries account for around 95% of all European retail sales, excluding Russia. The remaining ten countries are either too small (eg Luxembourg) or are not sufficiently well developed to warrant detailed coverage (eg Romania and Bulgaria). Many of the developing countries plus Russia and Turkey are covered in Mintel’s annual European Retail Handbook, as well as the Mintel report, Retailing in Emerging Markets – Europe, June 2011.

This data in its entirety is contained in the single copy 19-country report, which gives a full overview of electrical goods retailing in Europe. Single country reports are also available for the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

The focus of the full European report is the electrical goods specialists, which are generally the dominant players in the market. We have produced major profiles of 13 top electrical retail businesses in Europe including the four major buying groups.