Pureprofile’s Audience Intelligence maps retail trends

Pureprofile, the data and insights company, has announced the newest iteration of their in-market SaaS solution, Audience Intelligence: Top 1,000 brands, analysing the anonymised spending of Australians from Boxing Day (December 26) to the back-to-school period (January 31) in both 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. 

The report reveals that rising living costs have led to an overall decline in average retail spending. The books category was the most affected, with an 8% decline year-on-year, followed by clothing, shoes and fashion, with a 4% decline. Gaming and fitness, sporting and outdoor equipment both observed a 3% decline, while furniture, household goods and appliances were the least affected retail category with only a 2% decline.

Across categories, Boomer spending was found to have declined the most, followed by Gen X. Average spending for Gen Z also dropped in four out of five categories but saw a sharp 8% rise in the fitness, sporting and outdoor equipment categories. The average spends for millennials saw the least decline overall, with a 4% spending increase in the furniture, household goods and appliances category. 

While the books category saw the most decline, the online ebook subscription service Scribd achieved a 13% growth year-on-year. Interestingly in the clothing, shoes and fashion category, despite spending declining,12 out of 14 luxury and up-market brands were found to have increased year-on-year spending. For example, Ralph Lauren saw an impressive 38% increase with only a 1% market share. Pureprofile believes this spending anomaly is an example of the Veblen effect. 

New South Wales had the most significant market share in all sub-categories but did not see the greatest spending decline. Instead, the most significant decline in spending was most commonly seen in regions with the least market share (1-12%), namely the Northern Territory, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. 

Audience Intelligence: Top 1,000 brands is a data platform that showcases the verified, transactional data of Australia's top 1,000 consumer brands. The platform is a powerful tool for businesses looking to gain insight into industry market share, understand how they stack up against their competition and track consumer spending trends, all from anonymised raw data. 

Comprising transactional data that amounted to over AU$6 billion in spending via more than 115 million transactions a year and sourced from financial institutions, businesses will be able to understand when, where and how often people spend within a range of industries. 

The unfiltered data accurately presents a business's position in its sector and will enable them to leverage its strengths by building deep consumer profiles, helping them drive better research and marketing outcomes, and verifying the effectiveness of advertising activities.

The platform consists of more than 30 categories, such as accommodation, entertainment (including recreation, sport and streaming services), financial services, food and beverages (including alcohol, food delivery, meals and takeaways, and groceries), service stations and various retail sectors (books, apparel, gaming, sporting, furniture).

Businesses will have access to a plethora of insights via the platform, including average transactions per customer, average revenue per transaction and the share of market customers. 

Businesses can also gauge the trends, showcasing the fluctuation of performance over time, and demographics, including customer location and market share breakdowns by state and suburb.

These insights can be further filtered to analyse spending patterns by generation, location, and online or in-store transactions over specific periods.

"It is evident that rising cost of living is affecting Australian consumers in a tangible way. The launch of Audience Intelligence: Top 1,000 brands comes at such an opportune moment . With this data, businesses better know how consumers are approaching recreational spending in 2023. Put simply, it's challenging to rely on previous sales trends to map out an effective advertising and marketing strategy because this year is going to look very different," says Martin Filz, Chief Executive Officer of Pureprofile. 

"Our Top 1,000 brands offering is very unique and something that Australian businesses need right now. Unlike other solutions that look to measure brand value or trust by overlaying complicated formulas over annual report results or consumer perception, our platform gives you the facts. It is 100% raw spend data; there's nowhere to hide with the results. This product is for companies who want an authentic picture of where they stand in the marketplace so they can build solid strategies to either increase or maintain their standing." 

Pureprofile will add more industry categories to the platform throughout 2023, Filz notes.