Spend – a view of the whole nation

As our population reacts to the environment of COVID-19, there is evidence of change in spending patterns around New Zealand. Because of that, it’s now worth looking at our country as a whole. To do that we have highlighted the total spend and the average spend per transaction to show the changing spend behaviours as we continue through COVID-19 Alert levels.

Our Spend – index during COVID‑19

In this section we explore our spend index^[*] around the purchasing behaviours of New Zealand in six key categories during COVID-19.

Our index measure is created using the combination of transactional value and volume over a period of time. This allows us to get an idea of the index between each day of 2020 in this report compared to similar days from before the COVID-19 period.

We have grouped various industry spend classifications into six categories. You can read the footnotes where we highlight what industry classifications fit in what categories.

Our spend – before COVID‑19 and now

By looking at the daily spend index^[*] across the country, we can get a good idea of how behaviour has changed in response to COVID-19. The data presented here shows the changes for six categories in New Zealand - Hospitality. Consumables, Durables, Fuel, Apparel, and Services.

In this part of the report, we cover off three periods: a normal week in early 2020, two weeks ago, and one week ago. We have broken out the comparisons into two: one comparing last week to a normal week in early 2020 to see the changes compared to earlier in the year, and the other comparing what has happened over the last two weeks. From doing this, these are the insights we have discovered.

The change of spend index across regions before and during COVID‑19.

In this section we explore the spend index^[*] patterns in the regions of New Zealand during COVID-19.

Our index measure is created using the combination of transactional value and volume over a period of time. This allows us to get an idea of the index between each day of 2020 in this report compared to similar days from before the COVID-19 period.