Australia's retail spending surges 5% in Nov 2022: Mastercard

Most retail categories continued to record significant YoY sales growth during the period under review.

“Whilst we’ve seen the overall year-on-year sales growth slow, these remain really pleasing results in a challenging economic environment. The growth is driven by a host of factors including the incredible growth in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in Australia; price increases are also a factor which are also driving Australians to spend to get in ahead of inflation,” Australian Retailers Association (ARA) CEO Paul Zahra said in a press release.

“The ARA expects this to be the biggest Christmas on record for Australia, with Aussies predicted to spend Au$66 billion in the Christmas trading period—up 6.4 per cent on last year’s spending according to our ARA holiday sales predictions with Roy Morgan. Moving into next year, we do expect things to slow down—with a lag effect likely to the impact of inflation on retail spending. We acknowledge that it remains a challenging environment for businesses particularly small businesses on tighter margins, as they continue to battle rising operating costs associated with fuel, energy, labour, supply chains, and rent,” added Zahra.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (NB)