Retailwatch March 2011

Welcome to the Retailwatch for March 2011

To view the full repot, click here

For the month of March 2011 retail spend overall has risen very slightly (1.3%) since February, confirming Paymark’s announcement of retail’s spending modest growth on the previous month. With Natural Disasters, housing downturn, higher prices in fuel and food and an on-going trend in saving and not spending, it is interesting to see that retail spend has risen by 3.9%.

The categories reveal an interesting picture this month.

Sectors feeling the decrease are Books & Stationary (7.1%), which perhaps reflects the well- publicised troubles in that category . According to Paymark, the drop in home & building supplies (2.1%) could suggest wider impacts such as the housing downturn.

Although nationwide increase in spend to March 2010 paints a rosy picture for retailers, however remove Fuel/ Service stations (12.1%) and Supermarkets/Food Retailers (6.7%) from the scene and things aren’t quite as good, with just a 0.5% increase against a year ago.

Taking a regional view, there is plenty of variation across the country, with Recreation & Entertainment (2.4%) a key player. Spend in the category has increased by 15.5% in the North Island, but decreased by a whopping (35.3%) in the South, and unsurprisingly 53.8% in Canterbury. Notwithstanding this, in Canterbury all things considering with overall spend in the region up 2.9% on March last year- this increase is driven by Supermarkets and Service Stations- and a 21% increase in spend at Liquor Stores in the region. While Home & Building supplies has continued to decrease nationwide, regional spend has increased in Auckland and Waikato, suggesting that recovery could be around the corner.

According to AA Petrolwatch, with a US$10 increase in the price of oil last week the retail price would have risen by as much as 10 cents per litre if it weren’t for the slight rise in exchange rate. If oil rises any more, or the NZ$ falls, expect pump prices to go up. If prices rise it will be interesting to see if this affects fuel consumption.

If you would like a copy of the Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan reports, email: retailwatch@datamine.com
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.