Queenslanders and Western Australians the biggest online shoppers, Australia Post reveals
The states home to Australia’s biggest online shoppers and what they’re buying are revealed as Australia Post lifts the lid on our spending habits.
Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham believes consumers face a “triple threat” from higher interest rates, inflation and the rising cost of living that will weigh on their spending habits this year, putting the challenge back on retailers to entice shoppers to their physical and online stores.
Unveiling the latest 2023 Australia Post e-commerce industry report, the mail and parcels supremo said that last year without lockdowns and restrictions, Australians returned to physical stores in strong numbers.
However, the fundamental shifts in the way we live, work and shop that occurred during the pandemic were here to stay – and this was compounded by the many economic challenges now lashing the country.
“While we’ve largely been able to put a trying few years behind us, new challenges are emerging and informing the spending habits of Australians. The triple threat of interest rate increases, inflation and rising cost-of-living will continue to weigh on consumer spending and provide a new test for retailers,” Mr Graham said.
The latest e-commerce report showed a resilient shopper in 2022, free from Covid-19 restrictions and while still eager to shop online that pace of online shopping growth had moderated after the end of the omicron wave earlier in that year.
And the most eager shoppers to go online in 2022 were from Queensland and Western Australia – both states which had limited lockdown laws – with Queensland leading the way in 2022 with the highest year on year growth in number of online purchases, up 11.1 per cent. It was closely followed by Western Australia where online sales growth rose 11 per cent.
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The Australia Post report found that $353bn was spent in retail in the past year, with one in five of these sales occurring online to see Australians spend a record $63.8bn online in 2022, surpassing 2021 spending by 1.7 per cent.
This saw 9.4m households shopping online, or 82 per cent of all Australian households. And thanks to the galloping popularity of shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday – held in November – the month November has cemented its position as the most popular month for online shopping, where a record 6m households made an online purchase.
Australia Post general manager for parcel, post and e-commerce services, Gary Starr, said online shopping growth had retreated from its peak growth through the worst months of the Covid-19 pandemic but that consumers were still highly interested in e-commerce retail.
“We are back to the pre-Covid trend, which is low single digit growth but what is growing is penetration. (Online) penetration pre-Covid was at about 11 per cent, it got to 20 per cent at the peak at the back end of last year and for the full year it (online sales as a percentage of all sales) was about 18 per cent.
“And I would expect that it will continue to grow, now we are saying it‘s harder in the very short term given what’s going on with the macro economy but generally speaking penetration will grow and will get to about $1 in every $3 spent will be online for retail in the next decade.”
Mr Starr said November was the record month for online retail, generating sales from popular sales events of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as well as dragging forward some Christmas sales. The Australia Post e-commerce report said November was a record-breaking month in particular for fashion, with athleisure and footwear being most popular.
“The real message is those two weeks, that cyber period, is now the biggest single online shopping event for the year and it has been for a few years now and even last year with shops reopening it was still up on the year before. And I think there are two elements; retailers elongating the sales event and consumers looking for value and taking advantage of those sales.
“It starts almost a week or ten days pre Black Friday and it continues through the period after, which is why that two week period that we consider is growing every year.”
The e-commerce report also revealed the pet category was the fastest growing category with Australia now having the highest pet ownership in the world. Fuelled by strong pet ownership uptake during the pandemic, the pet category saw more than 21 per cent year on year growth, peaking in August 2022.
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