The November edition of the ABS's Household Impacts of Covid-19 Survey was released earlier today with the main topics of interest being shopping habits, wellbeing and the use of stimulus payments. Responses were taken between 13-23 November from 3,400 households, with the ABS advising of a sampling change it has made from this survey onwards to gather responses from a much larger number of households than before.
On shopping habits, today's survey reported there has been a sizeable shift in attitudes towards online shopping, with 33.4% of respondents saying they now prefer to do more shopping online than was the case before the pandemic emerged. The shift is being driven by the two largest states, which have also had the highest case counts during the pandemic, with Victoria recording a 42.8% increase in preferences for online shopping and New South Wales rising 35.1%. While not as pronounced, there have still been noticeable rises across the other states; Queensland 27.8%, South Australia 25.9%, Western Australia 20.6% and the rest of Australia (Tas, ACT and NT 29.7%).
ABS retail sales data confirms these trends playing out with the online segment recording a stunning rise in its share of total turnover since the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, recent high-frequency data made available from some of the major banks have been showing incredible strength through the Black Friday sales period.
In looking ahead over the summer period, the online shopping habit is likely to stick. Between November to January 2021, 22.1% said they intended on shopping online once a week, 25.5% once a month, 10.8% once over the period and 2.2% said they would shop online all or most days. All up that tallies to 60.6% of respondents that intended on doing at least some online shopping over summer, with the strongest intentions coming from the two major states with Victoria at 67.8% and New South Wales 61.4%.
To be clear, in-person shopping is still very much the preferred option. A total of 94.5% of respondents said they intended to shop in-person over the summer, albeit this is slightly lower than would be the case (97.5%) if the pandemic had not occurred. But the pandemic has had varying implications depending on the type of shopping in question. The ABS's chart (below) shows that respondents tend now to be less comfortable shopping in settings where crowds are likely to be larger and social distancing is more difficult. Respondents were asked about what would be needed to improve comfort for in-person shopping. Interestingly, the key factor was visible adherence to covid-safe practices by other shoppers such as social distancing (35%), which was placed ahead of a vaccine (20%), low daily infection rates (10%), retailers following Covid-safe protocols and an easing of restrictions (5%).
The survey provided good news regarding Australians' wellbeing. After a difficult year of restrictions and uncertainty, there are now clear signs that with the pandemic coming under control stress and anxiety levels are coming down. Relative to August, the ABS's chart below shows marked declines across a range of feelings by November.
Source: ABS 