Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific
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A Crucial Six Weeks for Retail
November 06, 2008
The current financial uncertainty / credit crisis is throwing up all sorts of hypotheses relating to online behaviour for us to investigate. Last week I presented at the AIMIA - Present Trends in Advertising forum and as part of that I discussed what is happening currently in the Retail industry.
Retail is now coming into the crucial four to six weeks of the year and predicting the likely outcome of the current trends is difficult and constantly changing. I opted out of making predications only to say that the next few weeks will provide us with the indicators of whether it will be a festive season for retailers.
The chart below highlights the visitation to the Shopping & Classified Industry and the trend since July 2007.
The downward trend since the end of the financial year was returning the online share of visits to 2007 levels which ocurred in w/e 18/10/08, as can be seen in the following chart that captures the trends of the first 18 weeks of each FY08 and FY09.
The past two weeks show promising signs that the retail industries in Australia may not be hurt as much as the perception, with an increase of 3.14% in share of vists (w/e Nov 1 vs. w/e October 18) turning around the trend and placing this year 1.64 percentage points ahead of the corresponding week in 2007 (w/e November 3, 2007).
While the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the National Retail Trade at current prices rising 0.2 per cent in September, forecasters have a sombre outlook for the coming months.
Over the coming weeks we will add more analysis to the Retail sector, looking at those categories that are recession proof and those that are losing appeal.
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Posted by Alan Long at 12:44 AM
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In Categories Economy | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds
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This sounds scary, it is so hard for the country to cope with the economical downturn. This is a great danger to know that even the retail markets are now affected. It is really necessary for many to do ways in having a good business career in this time of economical turmoil. One of the motivations is the stimulus package given by the government; this is the way, which they think could help for the stimulation of the economy to back to track again. Many small businesses have been reporting an upswing since the recession began, such as thrift stores, pawnshops, and payday loans businesses. Overall spending had taken a bit of a nosedive, but it seems to be turning the corner. Many consumers are now realizing the value of thrift. Getting the same stuff used at a fraction of the cost for new can really pay off.
Posted by Payday Loan | February 18, 2009 06:50 PM