Christmas is fast approaching and the shopping rush is starting to build. The pre-Christmas build-up starts gradually in November and climbs to a frenzy of activity in the last few days.
Based on 2006, when Christmas Day last fell on a Monday, the busiest shopping day is likely to be the Friday before Christmas this year (23 December), as was the case in 2016 as well. But generally the entire last week is busy.
Taking insights from Paymark’s 2016 records, national spending is likely to rise to 156% of the weekly average of the first ten months of the year. The frenzy is relatively more in the regions, including in Gisborne (173%), Hawke’s Bay (171%) and Nelson (167%) in 2016. By way of contrast, while still busy, the last week before Christmas in Wellington was only 49% above average in 2016. The build-up traditionally starts in November and spending is likely to jump by about 10% around this time of year and then continues to rise towards Christmas, judging by previous patterns seen through the Paymark network.
Paymark figures for 2016, when Christmas Day was last on a Sunday, show spending in weeks that ended on a Saturday in early November being around 105% of the weekly average of the first ten months of the year, then jumping to 115% in the fourth week and eventually rising to the 156% in the week immediately before Christmas.
Looking at recent figures, the regions have also been to the fore in recent weeks. Spending through Paymark totalled $5 billion in October. On an underlying basis, the annual growth rate was 4.3% and the seasonally adjusted monthly growth rate was 0.6%. One dampening factor on the annual growth rate was the occurrence of five Sundays in October this year which helps spread the growth over an extra week. Highest annual spending growth during September was in West Coast (10.2%), a sharp turnaround from the previous month, with all other regions also reporting growth above the national average for the month. The lowest underlying annual growth rates were in Auckland/Northland (+2.0%), Canterbury (+2.5%) and Wellington (+4.9%).
The bias towards growth outside the major centres is even more noticeable amongst core retail merchants. Outside Auckland/Northland, core retail merchants in the regions recorded $2.1 billion card spending in October, with an underlying annual growth rate of 6.1%.
