{"id":88779,"date":"2025-10-19T21:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/88779\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T21:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:33:08","slug":"nearly-half-of-kiwis-plan-to-spend-less-this-christmas-afterpay-survey-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/88779\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly half of Kiwis plan to spend less this Christmas, Afterpay survey finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kiwis are shopping earlier, with 64% of respondents planning to complete most of their buying between September and November \u2013 the earliest shopping behaviour shown in Afterpay\u2019s records.<\/p>\n

Just over half of respondents (52%) said this was because they wanted to spread the costs over time, while 52% said it was to avoid last-minute stress by planning ahead.<\/p>\n

Discount and sale hunting is more prevalent, with 48% of Kiwis waiting for discounts before committing to big-ticket purchases. This figure rises to 58% when buying experiences such as travel or passion classes.<\/p>\n

Nearly 40% of Afterpay customers in 2024 capitalised on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, with November 29 emerging as the most popular shopping day.<\/p>\n

As for what Kiwis want this holiday season, 74% of respondents said they plan to buy self-care products, with 39% looking to purchase wellness items.<\/p>\n

Clothing and shoes remain popular (51%), with interior decor items (34%) and toys (34%) also popular.<\/p>\n

Afterpay\u2019s findings come after Stats NZ\u2019s latest electronic card data<\/a>, which showed Kiwis spent less in the retail industries in September compared with August. It stopped a three-month trend of increased spending.<\/p>\n

Spending in the retail<\/a> industries<\/a> fell by 0.5% ($34 million) in September 2025 compared with the month before, while spending in the core retail industries decreased by 0.4% ($25m).<\/p>\n

The total value of electronic card spending, including the two non-retail categories (services and other non-retail), shrank from August 2025 by 0.4% or $34m.<\/p>\n

Kiwibank senior economist Mary Jo Vergara said the data was emblematic of a cautious consumer.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly the essential goods are taking up most of the budget. There\u2019s been not a lot left over before more fun things, with spending just on grocery goods and services,\u201d Vergara said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the September quarter data compared to last year, durables are down 0.9% compared to last year, while consumables were up 3.6%. So you can see how households are splitting their budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.<\/p>\n

Listen and subscribe to the Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an artificial intelligence (AI) voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiwis are shopping earlier, with 64% of respondents planning to complete most of their buying between September and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3225,19190,67066,138,67067,18399,4187,67068,11424,71,2964,189,194,807,7494,4188,11692,111,139,69,1118,5353,2170,4410,1518,644,6926,16739,14040,8262,8822,1961,61,19137],"class_list":["post-88779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-according","tag-affects","tag-afterpay","tag-business","tag-buynowpaylater","tag-christmas","tag-cost","tag-endofyear","tag-finds","tag-from","tag-half","tag-holiday","tag-kiwi","tag-kiwis","tag-less","tag-living","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-period","tag-plan","tag-provider","tag-research","tag-retail","tag-season","tag-shoppers","tag-spend","tag-spending","tag-survey","tag-this","tag-to","tag-traditional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}