Continuity and Change in Consumer Behaviour

I have the great good fortune to have [modest] homes in Wapping and in Bakewell.

Bakewell has been a tourist destination since before Jane Austen visited, and made its main hotel the setting for the reconciling encounter between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. With the growth of urban centres, the Peak District became surrounded by major industrial cities, market towns and mining villages; and despite the Thatcherite destruction of much of the former employment, there are still over four million people who live within one hour's travelling time of Bakewell [which is pretty central to the Peak]. Since the days of charabancs, the number who walk or cycle from Sheffield, Manchester and Derby have been massively exceeded by those who come on buses and coaches, and in family cars, to enjoy the beauty of the countryside, the variety of the shops, the delightful interests of the Monday market and - bizarrely - to eat chips by the river bank. With the chips, some eat fish, or fishcakes [Yorkshire or Derbyshire style], jumbo sausages or pies and - latterly - deep-fried Mars bars: but many just eat chips, and reminisce about doing the same thing decades previously with their parents and grandparents. Whatever exotic holidays or pastimes the family members may have been able to afford, they retain an affection for the location of childhood memories; sufficiently to keep two chip shops busy. Especially on Bank Holiday weekends, the town centre literally smells of chips. There are several good restaurants in the town, including two pubs that have moved upmarket; but that burgeoning alternative has not dented the traditionalist demand for 'open' chips to be consumed in the open air [and, disastrously for the wildlife] shared with the ducks and the geese. This is thus an example of a consumer tradition being continued through the generations.

Wapping has recently become a 'destination', partly driven by the mounting of major events at Tobacco Dock, partly derived from the increasing success of the establishments around St Katherine Docks, and greatly facilitated by the opening a few years ago of the East London Line as an integrated component of London Overground. Saint Katherine's  is only a few dozen yards from Tower Hill Station and is immediately adjacent to Tower Bridge; and direct lines from Wapping station now go to Croydon, Crystal Palace, Highbury and Islington and Clapham Junction. Thus people from much of London can easily get to Wapping; but why should they? Unlike the South Bank, the north bank of the river, especially at Wapping and Limehouse, is largely inaccessible to visitors. Except for the listed St Peter's church, there is nothing to draw the visitor into the centre of Wapping; where there are just [excellent] family shops and five pubs, four of which are not designed or geared-up to take the tidal waves of one-time visitors who now appear in them. The one pub that is set up to take the tourists is the Prospect of Whitby, which is known by name to millions of people, and features in family anecdotes as the place where young men [and occasionally women] in the dark ages when the London Docks were open could more-or-less safely go to see the rough edges of east end life. Wapping has become gentrified, and the riverside is now almost completely given over to expensive apartments, some in former warehouses and others in buildings made to look vaguely like old warehouses [and called after the former wharves that stood on the site]. Two modern restaurants - an Italian establishment from the 'nineties, and a fish restaurant from the noughties - have both attracted trade from far afield; but the sort of people who crowd the pubs, especially on sunny Saturdays and Sundays are a very different clientele from those who are attracted to the restaurants. The cool wind and the rain yesterday did not deter many hundreds of people from cramming in to the riverside pubs; from which the once-familiar faces of surviving 'old Wappingers' have disappeared. This change has been accelerating for five years, but this year it has become almost overwhelming. Where these people come from, and why, is a modern mystery: a consumer phenomenon.

Hospitality and Productiveness

An area of significant growth within the 'dominant services sector of the British economy' is designated as Hospitality. This covers hotels, restaurants, pubs, cafes and all such outlets; which directly employ 3.2 million people, supported by 2.8 million people who work in support and supply trades to the sector. Thus six million households are wholly or partially maintained by the business. The trade association for the sector, the British Hospitality Association, has undertaken studies that show that the sector is well spread across the whole country, with Hospitality constituting a top-six employer in every region of the United Kingdom.

It is also a sector that has defied the general sluggishness of the British economy since 2008. The increase in output measured over the period is 5.9%, double performance of the whole economy. Labour productivity [measured as gross 'value added' per hour] is around 3.2%, which compares favourably with the shameful national figure for the whole economy of only 1.5%. The sector paid £38 billion in direct taxes and claimed to have brought £161 billion of turnover into the economy in 2016.

The sector also displays many of the structural weaknesses to which the British economy is prone. It is very heavily dependent on low-paid labour, much of which is recruited from abroad: mostly from the European Union and the Commonwealth. This is obvious in the patchy linguistic skills of the staff, where more 'white Europeans' are in front-line jobs, with a higher concentration of non-white people as cleaners, kitchen porters etc. There is very considerable use of casual staff on very uncertain contracts, who receive low wages and thus make little contribution to the buoyant consumer demand on which the momentum of the economy depends. The British Hospitality Association emphasises that there is great potential for growth in the sector, so long as foreign travelers are attracted to the many well-marketed natural and urban assets that Britain and Ireland have to offer, and so long as the resident population have sufficient incomes to enable them to use catering and related facilities. If the now-evident slowdown in the real earnings of the nation at large continues, it will impact disproportionately heavily on the hospitality sector as people buy ready meals and take drinks home from the supermarket rather than eat and drink out.

Over the past twenty years hundreds of pubs have closed in every part of the country as social habits have changed. It is increasingly unacceptable for chauvinist husbands to leave their wives at home with the television and the children and cups of tea, while they booze with their cronies several nights weekly. Couples, often with their children, dine out together; though it is notable that many families sit as three or more isolated individuals who are communicating with different sectors of the games business, or with different contacts, even as they eat: so they may just as well stay at home where the kids could access 'unsuitable' sites from the bedrooms. It is little hardship to a family to cut out a restaurant meal when economy is forced on the household budget; but the negative impact of that happening a million times to the hospitality business is huge. Supermarket takings increase, and more pubs close.

To preserve their market, the better-designed and best-located pubs are moved upmarket as dining and drinking establishments; and, increasingly, managers are deterring 'traditional drinkers' from occupying floor space in 'gastropubs'. Significant investments are being made in the physical plant and in the image of selected catering outlets: and this requires the 'right sort of customer' to be attracted to them: people with sufficient money to provide a return on the investment [in premises, staff and the offering that is made] and who have the inclination to use just that sort of outlet. So this enhances the need for specialisation, branding, image-building and the need to advertise; which also require heavy investment. The returns that come to successful outlets are increased turnover, higher productivity from staff and increased productiveness which justifies constant further investment. A very few pubs survive as retrospective examples of the 'spit and sawdust' image of hostelries: though sawdust is not welcome on customers' shoes and most people would deeply be offended by any use of spittoons: it is a very subtle job to make an 'olde Englishe pub' attractive to capable consumers.