March 19, 2012
The Age
There are only so many sets of cheap sheets and discounted gadgets the Australian public can buy.
Despite last week’s feasting on hamburger vouchers, it looks like the group buying novelty has worn off. The latest figures from Quantium – the online retail consultants who analyse NAB’s credit and debit card database on an anonymous basis – show February’s group buying activity down 34 per cent from the August peak.
Yes, February activity did pick up from January, but the rate of growth was slower than in the same month last year. Most notably, Quantium’s group buying index has been falling while online retailing overall continues to grow apace.
Well-publicised fulfilment failures would not have helped the group buying firms’ cause. Offering bargain wingnuts is enticing, but failing to deliver is fatal.
Like many an internet phenomenon before it, the group buying outfits’ role as clearing houses for excess stock appears to have had it bubble moment and is now calming to become just another part of the retail landscape.
While the fall in group buying shows getting retailing right isn’t a problem limited to offline stores, the main retail focus this week will by on David Jones’s interim results on Wednesday. Hard on the heels of Myer’s profit fall last week, DJs is tipped to announce that its bottom line plunged the better part of 30 per cent.
Some local retailers are still fighting a rear-guard action against the allegedly evil customers who buy online from foreigners and don’t have to pay GST. The National Retail Association commissioned one of the usual suspects to produce a report that claims the world will come to an end if the exemption from GST isn’t scrapped for goods worth less than $1000 bought online from foreigners.
Well, maybe not come to an end, but the study alleges 118,000 jobs will be lost from retailing over the next three years thanks to online shopping, with 33,000 of those jobs going because of the GST-free threshold on imported stuff.
In my opinion, that sounds like snake oil – figures being viewed in such a way as to suit the usual vested-interests commissioning the report. It’s pretty much standard procedure for any number of expert opinions.
Even if I bought the figuring – and I don’t – there’s the little matter of what other jobs would be created with the spare money consumers would have left over after buying cheaper online.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor
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