Retailwatch: June 2010

Welcome to Retailwatch for June 2010.

To view the full report, click here.

The retail sector continued to climb in June 2010, with total retail spend across all the categories up 4.6% on June last year. This positive growth mirrors the findings from a study carried out during June by UMR Research. They found that the Consumer Comfort Index (CCI) had risen, meaning consumers are feeling more comfortable about the economy and their personal finances than they were a few months earlier.

Several categories have seen increases over 2009 figures that are inching closer to double digits in June, with Department Stores reporting the highest increase, up 9.7% on last year. In May, the category was only up a modest 2.9% on May 2009, so June marks a large jump in spend here. Speculation is that these stores are finding they have huge stock inventories, following an extended Summer and we are now seeing heavy discounting in order to draw patrons and move goods.

Only three categories have seen decreases in spend in June 2010, compared to June 2009. The largest of this was the Travel & Accommodation category, but this was still only a 1.7% decline on June 2009 spend. At Datamine, we believe this finding to echo the recent findings from the Visa Debit Savvy Shopper survey, which suggests that Kiwi’s are still being discerning when it comes to spending their money. It is logical that this category is where we would see hints of this notion, due to the ‘luxury’ nature of the spend.

The Recreation & Entertainment category remains flat in June 2010, experiencing only a 0.1% decrease on June 2010. This comes despite several blockbuster movie releases and some huge ticket releases including Metallica, who sold out two concerts in one morning. Interesting to note here however, is that Rugby World Cup ticketing has been removed from these figures, due to its ‘one-off’ nature that would drastically skew results for the category.

Lastly, the Fuel/Service Stations category has only a moderate increase in spend of 2.8% this month, as compared to June 2009. Changes in fuel prices reflect a slight consumer wariness of price rises, as price has increased by 4.8% over this period, whereas spend has only gone up 2.8%

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.

The team at Datamine can also help you explore further the impacts of retail industry trends on your business. If you have any questions or would like further information that would help support your business decision making needs, please don’t hesitate to call us.

Datamine offers a range of retail tools, including merchant specific market share reporting, catalogue optimisation, media return on investment, campaign analysis, customer profiling, churn and cross sell models, data cleaning and management and consulting.