Consumer Spending Things can only get bett … oh wait. This just in…
This has become something of a sorry refrain, but in the absence of any better news, we’ll sing it again: the dear old SA consumer ain’t what she, or in some instances he, used to be. Diddle dee dee. As evinced by the performances and strategies of our various fine retailers. Take Shoprite for example: while they’re sinking R1.5bn into new stores and DCs in West Africa, on the back of promising middle-class growth, they’re putting only R697m in back home, where … you get the picture? Or Massmart, where Joe and Mrs Six Pack are still buying their meat and three veg from Cambridge, say, but not fridges and TVs much at Game. Or Woolies, which while continuing to attract the plusher punter, is nevertheless slashing prices like nobody’s business to keep their middle-income shoppers on the hook. And according to various grim-jawed commentators, next year is not going to be better than this one, au contraire.
Comment: Stasis and stagnation. Perhaps if winds of change blew through the upper echelons of power we might feel a refreshing breeze down here in the trenches too.