The impact of daily weather on retail sales: An empirical study in brick-and-mortar stores
Florian Badorf and Kai Hoberg use daily sales from 673 brick-and-mortar stores and a random coefficient model, which gives each store its own response to the weather, to measure how much weather information explains daily sales. They find the effect depends on store location and on sales theme, reaching up to 23.1 per cent across locations and 40.7 per cent across themes, and that models ignoring non-linear effects can misjudge extreme weather. Adding weather forecasts improved daily sales forecasts up to seven days ahead, with the benefit shrinking at longer horizons.
Florian Badorf and Kai Hoberg use daily sales from 673 brick-and-mortar stores and a random coefficient model, which gives each store its own response to the weather, to measure how much weather information explains daily sales. They find the effect depends on store location and on sales theme, reaching up to 23.1 per cent across locations and 40.7 per cent across themes, and that models ignoring non-linear effects can misjudge extreme weather. Adding weather forecasts improved daily sales forecasts up to seven days ahead, with the benefit shrinking at longer horizons.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-21.
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Badorf, F., & Hoberg, K. (2020). The impact of daily weather on retail sales: An empirical study in brick-and-mortar stores. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, 101921. doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.101921