Retailwatch: May 2010

Welcome to Retailwatch for May 2010.

To view the full report, click here.

The trend towards recovery that we were seeing last month, for the start of the financial year, continues into May. Total retail spend across all the categories is up 3.4% on May last year. This positive outcome for the month has been echoed by Statistics New Zealand who reported a slightly accelerating growth rate in retail spend over the last two months.

While this increase paints a positive picture compared to the trough of 2009, there has been speculation about whether we have returned to spend levels akin to May 2008, before the global financial crisis. We had the Datamine team explore this a little further and found that total retail spend for May 2010 is down only 0.8% compared to May 2008.

Looking at just those figures that compare to 2009 now, the only category that experienced a decline in year on year spend in May was Clothing & Footwear. There has been some anecdotal comments about the mild weather enabling consumers to put off updating their Winter wardrobes until later into the season.

Conversely, the category with the highest year on year increase during May was Furniture/Appliances/Electronics. This supports the notion that consumer confidence is returning, as we are reaching further into our pockets to consume these bigger ticket items.

The Home & Building Supplies category continues its recovery, up 4.3% in May 2010 compared to May 2009, the highest we’ve seen it. The category has, in the last couple of months, climbed back from double digit decreases. In May 2009, the category was down 17.0% so this month’s report is indicative of huge gains.

Lastly, let’s look at the Fuel/Service Stations category. In May 2010, spend in this category is up 5.5% on May last year, which mirrors a 5.4% increase in price year on year. We were paying $1.64 per litre for Unleaded 91 last year, versus $1.72 that a litre of Unleaded 91 costs us now; clearly the incident in the Gulf of Mexico is doing little to curb our consumption, as levels appear the same as they were a year ago.

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.