Consumer spending data shows strong Easter boost
By Oliver Haill
Date: Tuesday 09 May 2017
(ShareCast News) - Further data emerged to confirm the strong lift to spending in April from the later Easter this year, according to figures from Barclaycard.
Consumer spending accelerated to 5.5% in April compared to the same month last year, which Barclaycard noted was ahead of the three-month average of 4.7% but that the Easter bunny hopped along much later this year.
The Barclaycard data showed strong in-store growth of 2.9% in April, well above the three-month average of 1.1%.
Online spending continued its double-digit growth at 13.2% but was below the three-month average of 15.0%.
The credit card spending data came on the same day as the BRC-KPMG's retail sales monitor, which showed strong food sales drove like-for-like sales growth to 5.6% in April from the fall of 1.0% in March, which was the Easter month last year.
"The April data is artificially higher in a lot of categories, boosted by the later Easter in 2017 versus early Easter in 2016," Barclays cross-asset research team noted.
"This caused a slowdown in some categories in the March data, and has in turn provided a significant boost to the April data. The timing discrepancy makes it impossible to determine how much is real growth and how much is simply a consequence of the later holiday period."
The team noted that electronics and household appliance stores have been declining over the last 6-12 months, "which could suggest that consumers prefer to spend on their property improvement, rather than on household goods".
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