Mastercard Advisors, a unit of Mastercard, has shared that total retail sales in Australia grew by 3.4% year-over-year.
The January SpendingPulse report* in Australia puts the strong performance of Australia’s clothing stores in the limelight, as sales were roughly 12% above average for this time of the year. However, this increase also highlighted that Australian consumers are making more considered choices, preferring specialty spending over department stores.
“Despite employment and consumer confidence falling, the Australian consumer remains strong, yet focused in their spending. Overall January retail sales were about 11% above average for this time of year, suggesting a positive outlook for moderate growth in the coming months,” said Sarah Quinlan, Senior Vice President and Group Head of Market Insights for Mastercard Advisors.
SpendingPulse reports are available to subscribers in six countries and provide an early overview of market indices to help retailers, investors, card issuers, banks and government agencies in their decision-making processes.
*Mastercard SpendingPulse is a macroeconomic indicator that reports on national retail spending and performance. The report is based on aggregate sales activity on Mastercard cards, coupled with estimates for all other payment forms, including cash. Mastercard SpendingPulse reports and content, including estimated forecasts of spending trends, do not in any way contain, reflect or relate to actual Mastercard operational or financial performance, or specific payment-card-issuer data.
For SpendingPulse Australia, Mastercard analysed the transactions
processed by the Mastercard Australian payments network and uses
statistical models, which take into account the trends of other payment
methods (cash) to produce accurate and efficient reports. SpendingPulse
Australia is based on a robust data sample drawn from all businesses
accredited by Mastercard in Australia plus other additional data
sources.
