Each year after the Christmas cheer has drawn shakily to an end, boxing day arrives with a boom as shops open their doors with %-off signs and windows screaming ‘prices slashed slashed slashed!'
Hangover in tow and perhaps feeling a little seedy from too much ham and Chrissy pudding, bargain-hunters spew forth in the thousands to unearth cheap treasures and good buys in shopping centres Australia-wide.
The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) expects retailers to spend a whopping $6.2 billion in the Post Xmas Sales this year, with NSW alone to assume the lion's share of the price pool with an estimated $2 billion worth of the sales.
The ARA says around $2.3 billion of that will be spent on household and entertainment items and $983 million on clothing and footwear, with exact figures to be released in February.
The ARA executive director Richard Evans is advising shoppers not to overspend on credit during the post-Christmas shop-a-thon, which is likely to last through to mid-January.
"With consumer spending habits they've been buying up big for a number of years now and they continue to do that," Mr Evans told ABC Radio.
"Our concern is that a lot of this may have been funded on credit and if that's the case we'll see that coming into the economy through retail (sales) in say February, March, April."
Australian shopping giants saw rises market-wide yesterday.
Harvey Norman (HVN) was up 29 cents at $6.70, David Jones (DJS) rose by 10 cents at $5.40, and Woolies (WOW) gained 29 cents to close at $34.09.
