Consumers in Sydney and Melbourne have ramped up spending at ‘pure play’ digital retailers such as Amazon and eBay during the 2021 lockdowns,leaving traditional bricks and mortar department stores with declining sales despite their ability to offer online shopping.
A real-time spending tracker showed eBay had been among the biggest winners,with purchases in Australia’s two biggest cities soaring 310 per cent over normal levels.
Spending by Sydney and Melbourne consumers at Amazon during the outbreak was 122 per cent above normal,a peak far higher than during last year’s lockdowns.
Butthe tracker,developed by consultancy Accenture and credit bureau illion,showed department stores struggled to maintain market share during the most recent lockdown,with purchases at David Jones,Kmart,Big W and Myer all well below normal in the two cities.
Spending at Bunnings has increased in Sydney and Melbourne during both lockdown periods but the peak in 2021 has been well below that reached during last year’s nationwide lockdown.
Accenture Managing Director Andrew Charlton said the combination of strong consumer demand for online purchasing during lockdowns,along with improvements in the supply of online shopping options,had stoked recent growth.
“There has been a massive scale-up in every part of the e-commerce system improving the delivery service,” he said. “There’s more capacity,more speed,better interface,lower costs and new business models.”
The spending tracker,which draws on anonymised weekly bank transaction data of hundreds of thousands of customers,also showed strong growth in services delivered online,including streaming services and especially gambling. During lockdowns in early September,online gambling spending in Sydney and Melbournewas 329 per cent above the pre-COVID-19 norm. Consumers in the two cities have also spent much more on food delivery,alcohol,pets and consumer electronics during the 2021 lockdown,the tracker showed.
Simon Bligh,chief executive of illion said new purchasing habits seem to have become “embedded” during the lengthy pandemic lockdowns.