By Emma Jolliff
In Christchurch sales figures were down thanks to yesterday’s quake but overall Christmas spending is up this year.
Sale signs before Christmas have become the norm and the Retailers' Association says that is because it is such a competitive market.
Today there were certainly bargains to be had.
“I’ve managed to get an $8500 cooker down to about $5000 – people just want to sell stuff,” says shopper Ali Townsend.
“There are some really good sales, it’s hard to say no to some of the deals,” says Sarah Davidson.
The latest figures from Paymark show we spent $230 million through their network yesterday.
That is up more than $6 million on the same day last year.
But John Albertson from the Retailers Association says this year we are spending it differently.
“What’s changed is, before, people were spending on their credit cards. From the reports we’re getting people seem to be spending more with what they’ve got so they spending with their EFTPOS account,” says Mr Albertson.
“This year perhaps with the full week we’ve spread it out a little bit, and the whole week’s been strong, in fact the month of December has been quite strong for retail,” says Simon Tong.
But yesterday’s quakes changed that for Christchurch.
“From what we can ascertain on our network, unfortunately Christchurch went backwards just over 17 percent yesterday, in effect 4.5 million of lost sales,” says Mr Tong.
3 News