Merry Hill is one of the largest regional malls in the UK, encompassing over 200 shops such as major flagships Primark, M&S and Next. Sovereign Centros from CBRE were appointed asset managers of the former Intu asset in 2022, and have since expanded the retail, F&B, and leisure offering, with recent high profile openings including Hollywood Bowl and national debuts for Harvey Norman and XF Gym.

When Merry Hill chose to invest in renovating the M&S flagship store, they needed to quantify the impact changes would have on performance. This required a robust simulation of the future turnover and resulting footfall. In this blog, we uncover the steps that CACI took to help Merry Hill understand the impact of refurbishing M&S and gain investors’ approval to execute it.

How CACI evidenced outcomes of refurbishing Merry Hill’s M&S

CACI compiled a report covering an overview of M&S’ current performance, the impact of a refurbishment on the retailer’s turnover and the cross-shopping potential it could bring across Merry Hill. The report also considered factors such as benchmark centre sales where M&S had already been upgraded, annual trips to Merry Hill should the refurbishment not take place, and potential customer loss to Bullring & Grand Central mall where a new M&S was due to open.

The data sources included in CACI’s report were:

• Transactional Spend Data: Derived from real-world debit card spend data from multiple sources, Transactional Spend Data is a fully consented view of spending patterns. It offers granularity into how different groups interact and how customers engage through an analysis of spend by product category.
• Acorn: CACI’s consumer segmentation model combines geography with a variety of demographics and lifestyle data sources, grouping the entire population into 6 Categories, 18 Groups and 62 Types. It supplies insights into the role that demographics plays in impacting the performance of a location and helps identify key users of a site.
• Location Dynamics: CACI’s machine learning tool predicts the retail, grocery and leisure catchments of over 6,000 destinations in the UK. It considers underlying population and spend, competitive landscapes and accessibility to each destination to model overlapping catchments. In this context, Location Dynamics was used to predict the centre’s performance, and overlap with Birmingham city centre, allowing for a comparison to actual sales to understand where and how the centre could grow turnover.
• Brand Dimensions: CACI’s benchmarking tool tracks the performance of 300 major brands over time. In this instance, it examined M&S spend performance nationally and at benchmarked locations.

What value would refurbishing Merry Hill’s M&S bring?

Having been at Merry Hill for three decades, investing in a refurbishment of M&S would solidify its continued commitment to the centre.

Increase in average spend, dwell time & turnover

CACI uncovered that centres with a refurbished M&S store have seen an increase in average spend per head in benchmark centres by 2.2%, which could help generate a substantial turnover at Merry Hill. With M&S accounting for 11% of centre floorspace at Merry Hill, improving its appearance could impact the ambience of the rest of Merry Hill and contribute to an uplift in dwell time, retail spend, and catering for the wider centre. Refurbishing Merry Hill’s M&S would also accelerate turnover at both the store and across the centre, as refurbishment is cited as a key factor for increasing sales.

Appealing to younger, more affluent demographic

Our research has shown that refurbished stores tend to attract younger, more affluent shoppers. While Merry Hill’s diverse shopper profile of Executive Wealth, Mature Money, and Steady Neighbourhoods Acorn groups is well aligned to key shoppers for M&S, key groups have all under performed versus catchment expectation. A refurbished M&S would appeal to these underperforming visitors.

A reported 82% of M&S shoppers also go on to spend in other stores at Merry Hill. Therefore, the new footfall that a refurbished M&S would attract would benefit other tenants in the centre.

Sales growth from new & existing shoppers

Within this project, we were able to quantify the number of new Merry Hill visitors that would be generated as a result of the refurbished M&S, with considering factors including their potential spend in M&S and their spill-over expenditure across the wider centre.

Graeme Jones, Executive Director at Sovereign Centros from CBRE: “M&S has been a big part of Merry Hill for several decades, so any decision about their future is one that needed to be made with real consideration of the potential impact on the destination. When we decided that we wanted them to introduce their latest shop fit, while consolidating from two units into one to create new opportunities, we started to create a proposal for M&S that would make the best possible case for a significant investment commitment. The data and insight from CACI was a crucial element of that business case, emphasising the rationale from a visitor, brand, and landlord perspective. It helped achieve a positive outcome for all parties, and the new M&S store is already beating commercial targets, and has had a big impact on Merry Hill and its visitor numbers.”

Ellie Brettell, Senior Property Consultant at CACI: “We’re increasingly being asked to support decisions like this one, where significant investment is involved and multiple parties need reassurance that the right choice is being made. Our objective, data-driven approach helps provide that clarity. Our contribution to this fantastic deal for Merry Hill was possible because of our expertise working for brands and owners of places – we understand the goals and potential impacts on both sides and can therefore create a report that rationalises a decision for all parties. Our evidence base made it clear that this deal would create positive outcomes for everyone involved, so naturally we’re proud that our work has helped to deliver such tangible success.”

How CACI can help

The insights provided through CACI’s report instilled both internal and external stakeholders with the necessary confidence to make significant investments in the refurbished M&S. To learn more about our products and data available from key partners to generate a single view of the UK property market, contact us today.

From weight loss medication and fertility support to cosmetic and hair loss treatments, the traditional elective healthcare landscape is being radically transformed.

Historically, elective healthcare might have been associated with older demographics or specific medical needs. However, recent insights from CACI’s Voice of the Nation (VOTN) consumer survey reveal a compelling shift: a surge in demand for elective treatments from wellness and image-conscious Gen Z and Millennial consumers.

This fundamental change has profound implications for healthcare providers and their location strategies to ensure they are precisely aligned with the evolving demographics of their target audiences and meet their notably high expectations around convenience, accessibility, and experience. This offers a huge challenge – and opportunity – for healthcare brands to adopt a more agile, data-informed approach to their physical presence.

A complex convergence of health, wellness and beauty consumption

Our Voice of the Nation (VOTN) survey reveals that weight-loss treatments like Mounjaro and Ozempic are projected to grow by 40% in 2025, with Millennials and Gen Z leading the charge. And Gen Z show equal interest among both male and female respondents unlike all other age cohorts, where women predominate.

And while 4.9% of respondents overall say they plan to pay for cosmetic treatments in 2025, this number rises above 10% for Gen Z respondents and female Millennials but remains below 3% for anyone older than 45.

It might be tempting to assume that this trend is purely about aesthetics. And there’s some truth in this. For those planning to increase their beauty spending in 2025, nearly 14.9% planned to pay for cosmetic treatment against 4.9% generally. Similar jumps were seen for hair loss treatment (10.2% versus 3.3% generally) and weight loss services (14.9% against 6.4% generally).

Yet other issues are also in play.

For Gen Z respondents who considered ‘Health’ as a top three issue facing the UK, there was also a distinct increase in planned treatments: 16.2% of Gen Z males concerned about health were planning weight loss treatments versus 9.7% in general, for example.

In addition, when we look at the Voice of the Nation sentiment data through our in-depth Acorn geodemographic segmentation, demand for all types of healthcare treatments spans both affluent and less affluent groups.

Brought together, the data shows there’s a truly complex mix of motivations — from aesthetics and wellness to proactive health management – across and within different age cohorts. But all with the clear underlying message that Millennials and Gen Z with their growing spending power are seriously invested in elective healthcare treatments that make them feel and look better.

Why Traditional Site Selection Falls Short

Historically, location planning in healthcare has relied on broad demographic assumptions or legacy performance data. But in today’s market, that’s not enough, no longer can site selection be based on general market trends. A clinic with the wrong treatment offer, placed in the wrong area – too far from its target audience, or in a location with low footfall – can struggle to gain traction, regardless of the quality of care it offers.

But critically, it’s not just about what these consumers want — it’s about where they are. Something that after Covid-19 has also changed. Traditional assumptions about most people working from the office every day no longer hold.  Our VOTN research found that on average people now only spend on average 2.5 days in the office – Gen Z spending 12.5% more time in the office than Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Younger generations are more likely to live in urban centres, commute via public transport, and expect services to fit seamlessly into their daily routines. This is reflected in our VOTN data which finds Gen Z less likely to have products delivered to home and far more likely to have purchases delivered to a pick-up/drop off point like a locker or local convenience store (39% versus 23% in general) or delivered to a convenient location like their office (27% versus 14% in general). 

And as we’ve already noted younger generations are also more likely to pay for treatments where the NHS is not offering what they need or on the timescale they want it.

What’s needed is a more granular, predictive approach to location choice: one that considers not just who your customers are, but how they move, spend, and engage with products and services.

A data-driven bespoke approach to Location Strategy

Healthcare treatment providers looking for physical locations that will help them match this complexity of demand and grow their business should be looking to modern location analytics that combine powerful human behavioural and geographical insights. Rather than taking an ‘off-the-shelf’ approach that can obscure what’s really going with the new healthcare consumer, a bespoke approach allows you to:

• Map journey-time decay to understand how far patients are willing to travel for different services
• Define profile catchments using lifestyle segmentation like our CACI Acorn that can leverage over 700 economic, behavioural and social variables to identify over-represented consumer types in particular areas
• Deeply understand who your ideal customers and their locations are through powerful location intelligence tools like InSite
• Overlay footfall and spend data to assess the commercial viability of potential sites
• Unlock ‘white space’ by using location analytics such as provided by our Location Dynamics to identify areas with unmet demand and minimal competition
• Rank postcode sectors by indicators like Private Medical Insurance coverage or self-pay propensity

The future of healthcare location strategy

The rise of younger, self-directed healthcare consumers who value their physical and mental wellbeing is clearly not a passing trend – it’s a structural shift. To stay relevant, providers must meet these audiences where they are – both physically and emotionally, including as they ‘age’ into other services like fertility, hair loss treatments and joint replacements.

To truly capture this growing segment, providers must harness advanced data to pinpoint and predict high-potential areas where these new consumers live, work, and spend. This ensures that every new clinic, every re-evaluated existing site, is positioned for maximum impact, catering directly to the evolving needs and preferences of a generation redefining elective health. That means rethinking location strategy as a core part of business planning, not just an operational detail. With the right data and tools, healthcare brands can build a physical location footprint that’s not only efficient for today, but also future-proof.

To find out how we can help you find the healthcare consumers best suited to your services, get in touch with us.