November 2020 spend volumes

Despite everything going on in the world around us and the fear of recession, we saw November retail shopping volumes – driven by Singles Day (11/11), Black Friday (27/11) and Cyber Monday (30/11) - hit new all-time highs. At a massive $5b, November’s retail spend was even bigger than the biggest months experienced over lockdown (May, $4.1b).  

A reduced ability to travel may have been behind an increase in discretionary spend for many. For others, the tougher economic conditions meant getting the Christmas shopping done in the sales is a practical necessity. Whatever the reason, we saw November sales growth outstrip the same period last year. Hopefully, shoppers haven’t over-extended their wallets, with Buy Now Pay Later deferred payment sales up 42% on November last year.

Total spend (online and off) in November:

Online spend

It wasn’t only the shopping tills ringing, with our online shopping carts also overflowing this November. While physical (offline) sales grew by a strong 8%, it was online sales that saw the biggest growth. In November there were over five million online transactions, delivering sales of $585m. This is a massive 27% higher than online sales in the same month last year. This is great news for retailers and the local economy, especially given that 70% of this spend was here in New Zealand.

Sales peaked on Black Friday with $34m being spent online in just that one day. This is the largest single day spend throughout 2020. Cyber Monday wasn’t too far behind on $33m. With these two big days, November’s overall spend ($585m) was almost at the online highs we saw during lockdown in May ($600m), after the Level 4 lockdown. November saw 1.38 million shoppers make 5 million transactions. Back in May we had 1.48 million shoppers online and 5.6 million transactions.

Online Shopping November 2020 (Compared to November 2019):