Retailwatch December 2011

Welcome to Retailwatch for December 2011

To view the full report click here

With the end of 2011 just gone, it was clear that people celebrated the festive season a bit more than in 2010 - December spending was up 3.9% year-on-year at $2.86 billion, and up 17.1% over November 2011.

It was a very positive month for retail, with only the Books & Stationery Stores (-9.6%) and Recreation & Entertainment (-2.8%) down compared to 2010.
As expected, most categories were up substantially in comparison to the previous month of November; the lone exception being Travel & Accommodation.

Department Stores surged as normal during December 2011, and ended up 2.2% higher than December 2010.

Regionally some interesting patterns emerged. Compared to December 2010, in December of 2011 every region was up in Cafes, Restaurants & Bars and Auckland led the pack with a 7.1% increase.

Recreation & Entertainment was broadly down but Gisborne bucked the trend with a 22.6% increase! Only Hawke's Bay was negative year-on-year in Clothing & Footwear, down 3.1%... and in Clothing & Footwear Metro areas were up 6% vs. 3.6% for non-Metro, and 6.6% in the South Island vs. 4.7% in the North Island.

Department Stores had the biggest gains in Tasman (5.6%) and Canterbury (4.8%).
Furniture, Appliances & Homewares did well in the South Island and Northland, while Health Goods performed strongly (4.7%) in the South Island, but were flat in the North Island.

The only other surprise of note is Liquor sales, up 10.4% in the South Island vs. 2.9% in the North Island.

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Retailwatch can be used to monitor trends in specific categories that are relevant to you while also building a broader picture of the overall retail environment.

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