--- title: Retail Watch - August 2015 description: VALUE OF ELECTRONIC CARD TRANSACTIONS WITHIN RETAIL CATEGORIES PERIOD ENDING 28 / 08 / 2015 SOME BACKGROUND ON THIS REPORT Total retail spend in New Zealan --- # [Retail Watch - August 2015](https://www.pumpt.co.nz/pumpt-news/retail-watch-august-2015) Written by [Pumpt Admin](https://www.pumpt.co.nz/pumpt-news/author/admin) | Sep 17, 2015 12:00:00 PM VALUE OF ELECTRONIC CARD TRANSACTIONS WITHIN RETAIL CATEGORIES PERIOD ENDING 28 / 08 / 2015 SOME BACKGROUND ON THIS REPORT Total retail spend in New Zealand for the 28 days ending 28 August 2015 was $3.2 billion. This represents an increase of 2.7% compared to the same period last year, but a decrease compared to the previous month (-0.4%). The categories showing strongest growth year on year continue to be Home & Building Supplies (+10.7%) and Travel & Accommodation (+10.8%). The gains in Home & Building Supplies and Travel & Accommodation continue being driven by growth in the North Island. The four categories showing declines year on year were Recreation & Entertainment (-2.4%), Clothing & Footwear (-0.9%), Fuel & Service Stations (-5.7%) and we have Books & Stationery Stores (-3.3%) returning back to their declining trend after having one month of increases in July. QUARTERLY SUMMARY AUGUST 2015 The total quarterly retail spend for the 91 days ending 28 August 2015 was $10.7 billion, continuing the trend of small increases when compared to the same period last year (+2.4%), but decreases when compared to the previous quarter (-1.8%). Home & Building Supplies and Travel & Accommodation continue to be the category showing most year on year growth with +13.6% and +11.6% respectively. The growth of Home and Building Supplies has slowed compared to the figures reported in July, with growth for the category now showing a +0.9% growth vs. the previous quarter. Travel & Accommodation continues to show declines vs the previous quarter (-4.0%) which is consistent with the seasonal nature of this industry. The categories where the quarter declined most year on year were Fuel & Service Stations (-5.0%) and Recreation & Entertainment (-4.3%) with Clothing & Footwear with also showing a decline (-2.9%). In terms of absolute sales Supermarkets & Food retailers continue to be the dominant category at $3.6 billion for the quarter, more than twice as much as the next category Café/Restaurants/Bars with $1.4 billion and Fuel/Service Stations with $1.2 billion. Unlike Fuel & service Stations, on a quarterly basis, the Supermarket & Food and Café/Restaurants/Bars categories both showed growth when compared to last year with +1.2% and +5.5% growth respectively. SELECTED REGIONS OF INTEREST MONTHLY TRENDS - TARANAKI Taranaki had a similar performance in August as seen in July 2015, with month on month declines (-1.9%), but year on year increases (+9.1%). The strong year on year growth results of increases seen in 10 of the 12 categories. With high levels of growth coming from 3 particular categories; Home Building Supplies (+53.2%), Recreation & Entertainment (+23.5%), and Health Goods & Service (+16.8%), all be it off small bases. The largest absolute shift in year on year spending was in the Supermarket & other Food category where they saw and $2.3 million dollar lift in spend. MONTHLY TRENDS - SOUTHLAND Southland continues to show slight overall declines when comparing to both the month prior and same time last year, delivering -2.0% and -0.4%. This overall decline in year on year performance is most significant for Clothing & Footwear (-13.5%), Recreation & Entertainment (-10.9%), and Liquor Stores (-9.5%). However, Health Goods & Services did show a strong year on year performance with an increase of +15.3%. MONTHLY TRENDS - WELLINGTON Wellington showed very flat overall performance this month when compared to same time last year. Exceptions to this were Travel & Accommodation (+12.3%) and Liquor Stores (+9.8%) where we saw increases, and Recreation & Entertainment (-10.7%), Fuel & Service Stations (-9.2%), and Clothing & Footwear (-7.5%). Total Retail Spend is up for August year on year (+2.7%) Travel & Accommodation gained the most, up 10.8% Home & Building Supplies also gained, up 10.7% Furniture/Appliances/Electronics gained 9.2% REGIONS UP THIS MONTH 8 CATEGORIES UP THIS MONTH 9 Fuel & Service Stations showed the largest decline -5.7% Book & Stationary stores are down for the month (-3.3%) Recreation & Entertainment and Clothing & Footwear are also down -2.4% and -0.9% respectively REGIONS UP THIS MONTH 4 CATEGORIES UP THIS MONTH 6 ONLINE RETAIL MARKET SUMMARY AUGUST 2015 Total online spend for the 28 days ending 28 August 2015 is $226 million which represents a decrease of -1.9% vs the same period last year. This gain is made up of a 5.1% increase in online spend with local New Zealand retailers, but a -1.9% drop in online spend with off shore merchants. The strongest online sector overall remains Travel & Accommodation, which took 61.3% of total online spend. This sector continues to see strong gains year on year of 10.1%. Outside of Travel & Accommodation the only other sectors to show year on year growth are Liquor Stores (+32.8%), Health, Goods & Services (+4.3%), and Furniture, Appliance & Electronics (+3.9%). ONLINE: NZ VS OFF SHORE NZ merchants accounted for 56% of Online in August. NZ merchants took 63.1% of largest Travel & Accommodation category. NZ merchants online spend in this category grew 13.3% vs last year, while off shore comparatively only grew by 5.0%. NZ also showed gains for Liquor Stores (+37.1%) and Clothing & Footwear (+6.6%), both off a small base. But showed declines in remaining 7 categories. Off shore showed growth in 5 categories with the largest categories continuing to be Furniture/ Appliances/ Electronics (+29.3%) and Liquor Stores (+23.2%). 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