Australian consumers are looking to ‘streamline’ their lifestyles by cutting back on buying luxury items, according to new research.
A Datamonitor report found that 41% of consumers aged between 25 and 34-years-old were reducing unnecessary spending, with 46% of people aged over 65 following suit.
More than half of those polled said that there were cutting back on non-essential items ‘all of the time’ or ‘most of the time’, with 60% saying that they were budgeting more closely.
A further 44% said they were focusing more on the lowest price this year, compared to 35% in 2009.
The survey underlines the caution still affecting consumers, despite hopes of a strong recovery for small businesses in the lead-up to the key Christmas period.
Andrew Haslip, senior data analyst at Datamonitor, says: “The main evidence for the switch to streamlining is the high proportion of consumers reducing the number of big purchases that they are making, cutting non-essentials from their budget, scaling back on treats and generally adopting a lower-key lifestyle with an emphasis on making do with less.”
“When consumers start to streamline their lifestyles, it leads them to manage their monthly budget much closer with direct implications for banks and other FS providers.
“The increasing costs of servicing high debt loads have led streamlining consumers to focus on price, with this being the most important change in what they look for in an FS provider.”
