Tag Archives: jb hi fi

Women drawn to Woolies, Amazon and lifestyle: Nielsen Online Ratings

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In the lucrative digitally-active female segment, Woolworths and Amazon are the most visited retails sites, Disney Online and kidspot.com.au win out in the family and lifestyle category and taste.com.au is winning the battle of the food websites.

Nielsen’s Online Ratings found that the highly engaged 25-54 year old female group accounted for 30% of the total online population in June, 33% of the total audience for mass merchandiser retail sites and 45% of all page views on Big W, Amazon and Kmart sites.

An average member of the group, which accounts for around 4.6 million Australians, spent 89 hours online for the month, viewing more than 3000 web pages across 86 sessions. Shopping is one of their favourite activities; they access Australian retail sites most frequently and have a strong relationship with online auction sites, being 11% more likely than the general online population to use eBay.

The major discount department stores all feature in the group’s most visited retail sites along with DealsDirect.com.au, Westfield, Coles, JB Hi-Fi and MYER. The Iconic also featured as one of their most visited sites, giving the Sydney-based online fashion site the lead in the pure-play fashion category, with 308,000 unique visitors in June.

According to Nielsen, the vast majority of women in this market segment regularly access major Australian publisher sites, such as Google, Yahoo!7 and Facebook.

In the overall rankings, Google held on to its position as the most visited site, followed closely by Facebook which still dominates the field for time on site. NineMSN’s group of sites retained third spot, followed by YouTube, Microsoft and Yahoo!7.

Small declines in page views were recorded across the board due to one day less of tracking for June than in May, however unique audience sizes for many of the top ten most visited websites dipped slightly.

 

Woolworths most valuable Aus brand, pockets of hope for decimated retail

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More than half of Australia’s top 30 brands registered declines in their value over the past year, with Harvey Norman and David Jones among the worst hit, a study has found.

There were clear winners and losers over the past year, Brand Finance found in its annual study into the value of Australian brands. Retail and finance brands bore the brunt of the tough conditions, with many in these sectors experiencing a 10-20% decline in the value of their brands, but it wasn’t all bad news for these sectors with standout brands performing well.

In the retail sector, Bunnings, Coles and Target showed that growth is achievable despite difficult trading conditions, notching 20.3%, 14.5% and 10.0% increases in brand value respectively.

Coles, valued at $4.7 billion, succeeded in closing the gap on rival Woolworths, gaining $597 million in value and moving up the ladder to reach third position. Woolworths, valued at $7.1 billion, maintained the top spot despite losing $504 million of value, prompting managing director of Brand Finance Australia, Tim Heberden, to point out three areas where retailers could step up their game. “Due to increased international competition and changing consumer behaviour, Aussie retailers are learning the importance of customer service, brand differentiation, and omni-channel strategies,” Heberden says.

Australian finance brands also recorded mixed results over the past year, but on the whole outperformed their global peers with six of our banks featuring in the top 100 of Brand Finance’s global list of the top banks. MLC declined the most out of the top 30 brands, shedding 25.8% of its brand value. Macquarie Bank and St George also experienced significant declines, but at the other end of the scale BankWest and ANZ increased in value by 16.5% and 9.8% each. The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) seized the title of Australia’s most valuable banking brand from NAB, increasing its value by $185 million.

Another brand value study, Millward Brown’s BrandZ, recently ranked CBA as the most valuable Australian brand on the global stage at $13.1 billion, compared to the $4.1 billion valuation given in this study. However, Millward Brown does not release Australian results or include all Australian brands in its global list, making no other comparisons possible.

Brand Finance calculated the overall value of the top 30 Australian brands at $51 billion, well below the value it attributes to the largest global brand, Apple, at US$71 billion. The researcher calculates a brand’s value by looking at a company’s market share, profitability, reputation and emotional connection with consumers.

Telstra held on to second place in 2012, gaining $294 million to reach a value of $5.1 billion, placing the telco on par with the once great Nokia brand in an international context.

The Qantas brand continued to free fall dropping below the billion dollar threshold, although this year’s drop of $108 million represents a reduced rate of decline.

 

Online pattern changes as growth slows and domestic etailers hit back

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Growth in online retail continues to outpace traditional retail at a rate of almost four to one, but the online pattern is changing as its growth slows and domestic retailers begin to hit back at international competitors.

National Australia Bank’s latest ‘Online Retail Sales Index’ found that Australians spent $11.1 billion online over the year to April, a 15.5% year-on-year increase. However, the pace of growth in online sales for last month was down significantly on the previous two months, with sales rising by 26.4% in February and 19% in March.

The current period of analysis also revealed that while online growth had slowed, domestic retailers hit back at their international counterparts, showing stronger growth than their often larger and more sophisticated competitors. Australian operators experienced growth of 16% year on year, compared to 13% for international sites, continuing a shift back to local retailers which began in the latter stages of last year after hype around the dollar reaching parity died down.

Looking deeper into the numbers, a downturn in the household goods and electronics sector was the key driver of the overall slow down, with growth turning negative in April, down by 5%. This sector diverges from the other categories of online sales, which were stable at or above 20% year-on-year growth.

According to group chief economist at NAB, Alan Oster, a weakening in domestic demand and consumer behaviour regarding tablet sales may have contributed to the downturn in the electronics sector.

The figures warn of continuing weakness in electronics, which has resulted in profit downgrades for the likes of Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith, spreading to online retailers also. In recent months major retailers including Myer, David Jones and Target have laid out plans to upgrade their online presence in an attempt to shift to an omni-channel strategy and guard against the soft market.

Despite the downturn in fortunes, NAB’s report shows that traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers continue to dominate, accounting for 94.9% of sales. But growth among offline channels remains significantly lower than online, at 4.1% year on year in March according to the ABS.

NAB Online Retail Index April 2012

Reputation Index: Apple rules, Qantas slides, Telstra jumps

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Apple is the strongest corporate brand in Australia, according to a new study, which ranks Telstra as the biggest climber and Qantas as one of the biggest losers over the past year.

AMR’s ‘2012 Corporate Reputation Index’, developed in conjunction with the Reputation Insititute, ranks brands based on seven key drivers of reputation: products and services, innovation, workplace, citizenship, governance, leadership and financial performance.

Apple came out on top of the rankings, taking out the top spot for all attributes apart from citizenship where it ranked third. Leader for the past two years, JB Hi-Fi, placed third in 2012’s rankings, while Australia Post, Toyota and Nestle rounded out the top five.

reputation index

Telstra was the biggest mover on the list, jumping 15 places to rank 45th on the back of greatly improved performance innovation and products and services.

Qantas dropped 18 places (from seventh in 2011 to 25th in 2012), while competitor Virgin Australia cracked the top 10, climbing from 13th place to sixth on the back of strong performance in governance.

According to general manager of AMR, Oliver Freedman, Qantas’ reputation recovered substantially from the initial impact of the last year’s grounding, but there was still substantial distance to travel to return to the levels of February 2011. “The brand has clearly regained some ground and the results indicate Australians still have a relatively strong emotional connection with the Qantas brand,” Freedman says.

Reputational recovery was evident for David Jones over the past year, boosting the department store’s from 25th to 14th place, a ranking still below its eight place in 2010. Rival Myer maintained its edge, placing ninth in the rankings.

“One of the big challenges facing David Jones going forward are perceptions around its ability to innovate, ranking 31th of the 60 companies,” Freedman comments.

Murdoch’s News of the World debacle clearly did nothing to enhance News Limited’s reputation at home with the company ranking 59th overall and in last place on governance.

“Mishandling of crises has an immediate flow on effect in any reputation ranking,” Freedman adds. “News Limited’s inability to quash the media discussion and ongoing public debate is evident in the results.”

However, its competitor, Fairfax Media, also recorded a drop in Reputation (from 48th to 56th) and decreased across most reputation dimensions including leadership, financial performance, workplace and governance.

Freedman attributes the results of the two media companies as an indication of how the entire media industry is now viewed following the News of the World fallout. The industry’s reputation has taken a hit with the two major players both dropping significantly in rankings,” said Freedman.

Produced each year by research consultancy AMR, the Reputation Index surveys nearly 60002 Australians aged 18-64 scoring the country’s 60 top companies (based on revenue in BRW’s top 1000 listing), and ranks them accordingly.

Nielsen online ratings: YouTube falls, online retailers surge

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Nielsen has released its online ratings for November reporting a fall in the rankings for YouTube and significant uplift for online retailers in the lead up to Christmas, with Westfield experiencing the highest increase, up 115% in the past month.

The top 10 website rankings were relatively stable between October and November, apart from a small decline in visitation to YouTube which saw Microsoft leapfrog the video site into fourth place.

Small declines were seen for seven of the top 10 sites due to a smaller active universe in November, the report says. Slightly more men were active during the month, but their activity rates dropped significantly on the previous month to put their usage levels below that of females.

Google and Facebook continue to dominate the top 10, with one in every four minutes that Australians spent on the web in November coming on Facebook.

Top brands in November 2011 

In the media category, NineMSN led in terms of reach, however smh.com.au experienced higher visits per person and time per person.

While in retail, strong uplift in audience and activity has been noted across a number of retailers including Westfield (115% uplift between October and Novemeber), Big W (71%), Target (49%) and JB Hi Fi (39%). Based on previous years, another month on month uplift for online retail sites is expected in December.

Post-Christmas boom for Aussie retailers

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Retailers have announced better than expected post-Christmas sales figures that may have offset the slow spending lead up to the Christmas holidays.

The big retailers, such as Myer, David Jones and Big W have all forecasted growth figures, with David Jones Ltd forecasting its profit will rise between zero and 5%, while Myer expects to see a 3% increase in sales for the fiscal year and a profit rise of 10%.

Richard Uechtritz, chief executive of electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi Ltd told Reuters that the post-Christmas selling period somewhat made up for a slower-than-expected pre-Christmas.

“Certainly post-Christmas made December a good month and January year-to-date has been very good. It is well up on last year,” Uechtritz said.

The rebound bodes well for Australias

economy, of which nearly a quarter is generated by retail sales, and could improve the flotation prospects of at least three retailers owned by private equity after retail shares underperformed the market in December on sales concerns.