Retailwatch: August 2010

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Welcome to Retailwatch for August 2010.

More and more signs abound to indicate that we are emerging out the other side of the recession, if somewhat slowly. Overall retail spend, across all categories for August is up 4.7% on August last year, a similar increase to those we have seen in year on year figures for the last couple of months.

Although the increase is a positive sign for retailers in general, there hasn’t been the huge rush to purchase items before the GST rise that some were predicting. The only category where there is some evidence of this is the Furniture/Appliances/Electronics category which has seen an increase of 6.1% compared to August last year. More purchases in this category may signal a return of consumer confidence, as many were curbing their spend on these big ticket items during the worst of the recession.

The category that had the biggest increase year on year in August was Travel & Accommodation at 10.8% This category had been relatively flat for much of this year, so this provides yet more evidence that consumer confidence may be strengthening.

The Fuel/Service Stations category has seen a modest increase of 5.3% compared to August last year. Petrol prices in August 2010 are 3% higher than last August, so this indicates people are filling up slightly more at the pump, and perhaps being less conscious of conserving fuel as consumer confidence returns.

Only two categories have seen a decrease in August, compared to 2009 figures. The biggest of these was the Home & Building Supplies category, with spend down 5.9% on August last year. This category has made enormous gains to come back from nearly 20% year on year decreases some months, so while the decrease this month appears negative sitting amongst the other categories, the overall context for that sector paints a different picture.

The other category to see a decrease in August, compared to August 2009 is Liquor Stores, where spend is 1.3% lower than a year ago. While this doesn’t seem to be a significant decrease, it certainly signals a decline amidst the positive figures that this category had been seeing in the last few months.

It will be interesting to see the impact that the Christchurch Earthquake has had on the retail landscape. Those figures and the associated commentary, will be released by Datamine in October.

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.