Retailwatch: September 2010

To view the full report, click here.

To view the Canterbury report, click here.

September’s retail figures have been eagerly awaited, to give us an indication of the impact of the earthquake, and all of its multitude of aftershocks, on the Canterbury region and across the country in terms of retail.

Looking at the country as a whole, things are looking relatively steady with total retail spend up 4.1% on September last year. This indicates very little change compared to how we were tracking for year on year figures last month.

Notably, in the nationwide view the Travel & Accommodation category has seen a large increase, up 9.4% on September last year following a double digit increase in year on year figures last month. Also worth noting, the Furniture/Appliances/Electronics category is strong, with a 14.9% increase on September 2009. These two categories are indicative of a good vibe in the consumer confidence stakes and could also be evidence of a small pre-GST purchasing flurry.

Looking now at Canterbury’s report (also attached), overall retail spend, across all categories has stayed relatively flat for September, 1.9% up on September 2009. The largest decrease can be seen in the Recreation & Entertainment category, which would have been sorely affected by closures during the quakes and due to concentration of merchants closer to the city centre which was affected badly.

On a more positive note, the Furniture/Appliances/Electronics category is up 10.2% in Canterbury compared to the same month last year. Some of this will be due to people replacing items that were damaged in the quakes, as well as it being indicative of some of the pre-GST rise activity that the rest of the country exhibited.

The Home & Building Supplies category also paints an interesting picture, up 1.9% in Canterbury on last September, but this is compared to a decrease across the country of 3.7% for the same time period.

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.