Coming out of the Spending Slump?
The latest Spendmapp data is out. This takes us to September 2020. Local governments around Australia are using this data to identify which parts of their business community are rebounding, which are still struggling and what sort of impact their efforts are having in helping to drive an economic recovery.
Taking a quick bird’s eye view of the data, it does appear there is an overall rebound. And from a sample of Spendmapp user data from three states that have had contrasting experiences, what is clear is that, despite the different lockdown conditions, the pattern of growth and decline is quite similar.
It is true that Victoria suffered the most in August (Total Local Spend dropped by 20% from July and that from a relatively poor recovery from June to July), but as Figure 1 shows, the overall pattern of month-on-month change has been the same.
Visitor spending followed the same pattern, albeit with a larger drop in both April and — in Victoria — a significant drop in August.
Are we Going Online?
Interestingly, from March to September this year, Resident Online Spend (the name explains what it is) increased by an average of 2% per month for all three states. From March to September 2019 the increase was only slightly less than this. We might have expected a bigger increase this year, with more people working from home and shopping online. It is true the ratio of online to bricks and mortar spending increased, but it was only in Victoria that this was a significant increase.
So the Pandemic has certainly reduced spending and forced some online, but not as much as we might think. That’s mostly because the expenditure category that dominates even more than it did pre-Pandemic is Grocery Stores & Supermarkets and that is still, mostly, in-person.
Another month or so of data and we should be able to see where this is heading. As other categories rebound, we should expect to see more go online. Something to consider for our main street planning.
We should also start to see the effectiveness of various economic recovery efforts - local, regional and state-wide. Stay tuned.
