Retail sales dropped in December as shoppers increasingly shifted spending to the Black Friday promotional period.
Volumes fell by 0.9% on November on a seasonally adjusted basis as all sectors except food and fuel declined compared to the previous month, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Annual sales growth inched higher to 2.7% compared with 2% in 2017, though this marked a slowdown compared to the post-recession peak of 4.7% seen in 2016.
In the three months to December, the quantity bought decreased by 0.2%.
Estimates for the amount spent in December were 3.7% higher than the same period in the previous year, while the quantity bought was up 3%.
Online retailing accounted for 20% of total retailing, with weekly spending at £1.9 billion during December.
Month-on-month growth was seen across all sectors online, except household goods stores and other non-food.
Household goods declined 17.9% following Black Friday promotions, which boosted sales in November 2018.
Howard Archer, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club, said the drop in December volumes was a "disappointment" for retailers.
"This pointed to Black Friday-related promotions primarily bringing retail purchases forward to November from December rather than lifting sales overall," he said.
"The extended squeeze on purchasing power has encouraged consumers to become more savvy in their Christmas shopping ."
Philipp Gutzwiller, head of retail at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said: "After nearly two weeks of trading updates, it is no secret that many retailers experienced one of the toughest Christmases in a decade.
"While there were some winners and losers on the high street, the question now on everyone's mind is how long before the current challenges around tightened consumer spending and broader uncertainty start to ease?
"For now, there are enough retailers who either remain creative enough to tempt shoppers to spend a little more, or resilient enough to face into the headwinds.
"Those who aren't will be hoping for a turnaround in fortunes or, at the very least, a milder winter than last year and a few green shoots by springtime."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here