Consumer spending across New Zealand lifted slightly overall in October, a noticeable swing from average annual declines over the last six months of around 1.6 per cent.
New data released by Worldline NZ shows consumer spending through core retail merchants (excluding hospitality) in its payments network reached NZ$3.09 billion (~A$2.80 billion) in October 2024, up a slight 0.3 per cent from October 2023.
This is ahead of the traditional busy pre-Christmas spend, with Worldline noting that spending patterns remained mixed within sectors and around the regions.
“While this upward shift is positive, especially with the strong final week of October, the figures do need to be put into perspective,” Worldline NZ chief sales officer Bruce Proffit said. “The growth rate is low and is in part due to the fall of days in the month - and there remain mixed results across merchant groups.
“That said, merchants are now likely to be stocking up for the busy pre-Christmas spend in the next few weeks, so it will be interesting to see how things continue to trend. The day-by-day pattern is likely to be similar to that of 2019, when Christmas Day also fell on a Wednesday.”
Proffit said the first milestone to watch will be the Black Friday sales that will take place around November 29.
“In the days immediately prior to Christmas, spending in 2019 was strong from the Saturday through to the Tuesday before Christmas Day amongst the non-food stores, peaking on the Saturday. Inevitably, the grocery and alcohol spending peak came on Christmas Eve.”