Christmas shopping will be supercharged this week where shoppers are expected to spend more than $8.7 billion in the next seven days as the countdown to Christmas begins, according to the latest projections from the Australian National Retailers Association (ANRA) Christmas Retail Index.
Bricks and mortar retailers will be cheering the most as shoppers err on whether online retailers will be able to make deliveries on time. As a result, individually people will spend about $377 per person and $338 of that will be spent at a physical store.
Also, New South Wales will again be making the biggest contribution to the sales lift this week – up 21 per cent since last week. It is expected $459 million more will go through the cash registers in the state than last week. Queenslanders will also lift spending to $2.05 billion – up $562 million from last week.
ANRA CEO Margy Osmond said Christmas shopping will intensify this week as shoppers finalise Christmas preparations.
“In-store the tills will be ringing around the clock with spending expected to soar to $7.8 billion – up 23 per cent from last week’s spending in bricks and mortar stores,” she said.
“About $900 million will be spent locally online – dropping 40 per cent since last week. We would expect a bulk of online shopping to be completed now with shoppers crossing their fingers their online purchases are delivered in time.”