Carolyn Young: Retail NZ CEO on the uptick in retail spending for May
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What recent trends are impacting retail spending?
We've got some good news for our economy. We like the spending. We're back into this. Retail spending up 2.2 for the month, 2.8 for the year. That's the strongest in two years. Carolyn Young, Retail New Zealand CEO, back with us. Carolyn, good morning. Morning, Mike. Welcome back. Thank you. You've got a party hat on. You're doing some party poppers. What's going on here?
We absolutely have got a party hat on and doing some party poppers. And look, I think consumers are, you know, we know that March and April was really uncertain and people were concerned about the cost of living and inflation and the Middle East crisis. I think by the time we got to May, everyone realised we're in for the long haul. It's going to take some time to work its way through. We need to just sort of get on with life and work out what we can spend and how we navigate our way through this complicated space.
And given what's happened in the last 24 hours with this deal, do we take what we've got and run with it a bit?
How have consumer attitudes shifted since March and April?
Do we feel a bit of relief, psychological pressures off, and then we spend a little bit more?
Yeah, I think that that's a really good possibility. We know that we had a strong January, February, you know, really March and April were impacted by that crisis. And I'd like to think now that consumers will go, OK, we know that it's maybe six months before we get back to normal price at fuel at the pump. But, you know, in the meantime, that's the one thing that's been solved. So we can just get on with things and hopefully that brings a stronger economy through the next half of the year.
Let us hope so. Carolyn, good to have you on the program as always. Carolyn Young, the Retail New Zealand CEO.
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