The December 2011 Retail watch report has kindly been supplied by Datamine:

With the end of 2011 just gone, it was clear that people celebrated the festive season a bit more than in 2010 – December spending was up 3.9% year-on-year at $2.86 billion, and up 17.1% over November 2011. It was a very positive month for retail, with only the Books & Stationery Stores (-9.6%) and Recreation & Entertainment (-2.8%) down compared to 2010. As expected, most categories were up substantially in comparison to the previous month of November; the lone exception being Travel & Accommodation. Department Stores surged as normal during December 2011, and ended up 2.2% higher than December 2010.

Regionally some interesting patterns emerged. Compared to December 2010, in December of 2011 every region was up in Cafes, Restaurants & Bars and Auckland led the pack with a 7.1% increase. Recreation & Entertainment was broadly down but Gisborne bucked the trend with a 22.6% increase! Only Hawke’s Bay was negative year-on-year in Clothing & Footwear, down 3.1%… and in Clothing & Footwear Metro areas were up 6% vs. 3.6% for non-Metro, and 6.6% in the South Island vs. 4.7% in the North Island.

Department Stores had the biggest gains in Tasman (5.6%) and Canterbury (4.8%). Furniture, Appliances & Homewares did well in the South Island and Northland, while Health Goods performed strongly (4.7%) in the South Island, but were flat in the North Island. The only other surprise of note is Liquor sales, up 10.4% in the South Island vs. 2.9% in the North Island.  

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.

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