I'm sorry Winner69, your data is very selective & makes the figures extremely flattering to reality.
Q1 2014 was a very poor quarter whereas q12015 was a very good quarter.
Correct me if I'm wrong here you are saying sales were up 7% year on year by comparing Q1 2014 to Q1 to 2015?
That's not a year on year comparison.

From NZ Stats. "March was a boom quarter for retailers, Statistics New Zealand said today.
The total sales value was $19.3 billion in the March 2015 quarter, almost $1 billion (5.1 percent) more than the previous March quarter. Fuel retailing, down due to lower prices, was the only retail industry to have lower sales.
After removing the impact of price changes, total retail sales volumes rose 7.4 percent in the March quarter compared with the same quarter last year."

No doubt retail sales have been steadily growing when the NZ economy has been in a substantial growth mode underpinned by property prices, export prices & National's increased government debt program to fund road building. Retail sales is a lagging indicator obviously and two of the growth industries being diary & forestry are now not what they were.

Here is probably a much fairer reflection from NZ Govt stat. Under what they term is 'Key facts'.

Key facts
For the March 2015 quarter, compared with the December 2014 quarter (seasonally adjusted):

  • The total volume of retail sales rose 2.7 percent – the largest percentage increase since December 2006. In dollar terms, it was a record increase since this series began in September 2003.
  • All 15 industries had higher sales volumes.
  • Electrical and electronic goods retailing recorded the largest volume increase, up 8.9 percent.
  • The total value of retail sales rose 1.7 percent.




Quote Originally Posted by winner69 View Post
Comparing March quarter this yearvv March quarter last year. Actual sales and non of this seasonally adjusted stuff

Fuel sales were down $176m (impact of lower pump prices)

All other sales were up $1.108m ($1.1 billion) or 7% more than last year last year

So plenty saved on fuel but heaps more than what they saved was spent on other things.

The average quarterly increase (over prior year) in core sales has been about 4% - the 7% (close to 6% if we assume that savings from fuel was spent on treats and shouldn't be counted) in March is much stronger than that. I say really strong

Or are we arguing different things?