Retailers anticipate soft Christmas sales

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Roy Morgan’s annual Christmas retail sales forecasts, conducted in conjunction with the Australian Retailers Association, suggest Australians will spend over $52.7 billion across retail stores during the Christmas trading period, an increase of 2.6% from the $51.4 billion of retail expenditure during the 2018 Christmas trading period:

Growth in retail expenditure is predicted across all six categories measured with spending on Food expected to grow by 3.2% from a year ago to nearly $21.7 billion. Also set to grow strongly will be Apparel including clothing, footwear and accessories up 3% to almost $4.2 billion.

Hospitality businesses are forecast to grow by 2.3% to an expenditure of well over $7.4 billion and an impressive $8.8 billion is expected to be spent on Household Goods this Christmas, an increase of 0.6% from a year ago. Department stores are set to experience slower growth than other categories, up by 0.5%, to overall spending of almost $3 billion.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.