$12.6B Spent Online

Australians are spending big money online!

The National Australia Bank Retail Sales Index showed that Australians spent as much as $12.6 billion in online shopping from December 2011 to November 2012. This means that online retail sales increased by some 27 percent compared to data of the previous year.

The Retail Sales Index also revealed that 5.7 percent of the online retail sales came from the brick-and-mortar retail stores.

It is worthy to note that online sales growth continue to surpass traditional retail, which grew by only 2.6 percent year-on-year last October.

Alan Oster, chief economist of the National Australia Bank, said that November is always the peak month for online shoppers as they are preparing to buy gifts for Christmas. In fact, the findings showed that it was in November 2012 when online sales experienced a surge.

This means, however, that online sales for December goes down.

Oster said the continued growth of online sales should encourage more traditional retailers to start having websites and offer online shopping.