Japan's August retail sales beat department stores, supermarkets and convenience stores alike
Japan's retail sales rose 2.7% in August, the government's preliminary count shows, but department stores, supermarkets and convenience stores each grew more slowly than that headline number — a gap worth naming for anyone trying to work out which channel is actually carrying the market.
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) said retail sales rose 2.7% year on year in August, a preliminary figure, according to its Current Survey of Commerce released today.
Every one of the three store-format channels METI tracks separately grew slower than that headline number: department stores rose 1.9%, supermarkets rose 1.0%, and convenience stores rose just 0.6%, the ministry said.
A headline figure that outruns every channel beneath it means the growth is concentrated somewhere else in the retail basket — drugstores, home centres, fuel and vehicle dealers, or e-commerce, categories METI folds into the total but doesn't break out the same way. For a market where department stores lean on inbound tourist spending and convenience stores are the most exposed to everyday, price-sensitive domestic demand, a 0.6% gain at convenience stores against a still-present run of food-price inflation reads as close to flat in real terms — a channel treading water while the headline number moves.
% change year on year (provisional)