Australian retail sales, cyclical or structural slowdown?
Retail sales growth has been relatively weak over the past two years. Some commentators have attributed this to a combination of surging online sales and household deleveraging. It has also been suggested the decline in the growth rate is permanent.
However, CSFGAM Property Research finds the effect of these is either temporary or relatively small. This paper reviews these and other factors, such as offshore travel and rising utility costs, providing an attribution of their relative importance to the decline in retail sales growth as well as an outlook. View more research