Chart of the month: Consumer hots and nots reflect changing spending patterns
New data from Stats NZ shows a number of items becoming more popular over time, particularly as technology shifts, while other products fall out of favour with households as preferences change. The latest consumers price index (CPI) reweight reflects an ongoing adjustment to the spending patterns of households, and the popularity and importance – or not – of various items.
Our Chart of the Month sets out what’s hot, and what’s not, from the 2024 CPI reweight. Unsurprisingly, technology and convenience are two key themes, with smart watches and meal kits added to the CPI basket. Fashion is changing, with women’s trackpants expanded to include more in-style items, and an item that has been in the basket for 69 years has finally been removed for lack of spending.
Background to the “basket” of Kiwi spending
With 110 years of data, New Zealand’s consumers price index (CPI) provides a rare long-term window into the lives of New Zealanders. The CPI basket is updated periodically to best reflect the overall spending patterns of the country, and so the rise and fall in popularity in spending, tracked by the CPI basket, gives an objective picture of what products are hot, and which ones are not, to households.
Our Chart of the Month shows the key movements in and out of the CPI basket in 2024. Some of the changes make sense given changes to technology over rent years, while others cement the demise of older ways of working – but are still large milestones.
What’s in, and what’s out?
Modern options for food and clothing
Food options haven’t shift too much, although celery has been replaced with spinach, and soya milk (introduced to the CPI backet in 2008) has been expanded out to a broader “plant-based milk”. Meal kits have entered the basket, as Kiwis continue to look for convenience options in their shopping.
Changing fashion trends are a bit more apparent in this CPI basket reweight. It seems that men apparently aren’t getting as cold anymore, with men’s jerseys dropping out of the basket due to low relative spending. Formal wear is also falling down the priority list, with ties removed from the basket in 2024, coming over a period that even Parliament decided that ties were optional rather than mandatory. Instead, headwear is now on-brand, with caps, hats, and otherwise entering the basket. Women’s fashion has shifted too, with women’s trackpants expanded, renamed, and effectively replaced with women's yoga pants and activewear, as fitness, fashion, and comfort combine as the current fashion style of choice.
A few more unusual items have left the basket in 2024, including alarm monitoring services and chainsaw hire, and pillows have replaced duvet inners in the bedroom.
Better data on cruises has seen this transport option enter the basket, with a reasonable weight too.
Landlines biffed from the basket after 69 years, DVDs out too
But perhaps the largest change to the CPI basket in 2024 was the removal of home telephone line rental, related services, and national calls. The phone has been off the hook for a while, with Census data showing a continued decline in the number of households with a home phone still.
But the removal of these items from the CPI basket removes a long-lasting inclusion, with telephone services being introduced into the basket in 1955 – a 69-year end-of-an-era. The removal of DVDs from the basket marks the end of a shorter technological era, with DVDs entering the basket in 2006.
More broadly, piano lessons have been broadened out to “music” lessons, and streaming services have been split out into their own item, having previously been within subscriber television.
