Yes to Yoghurt, No to Furniture | It’s On Sale Daily Brief, 22 August 2026

Neil Fairhead

CEO, It’s On Sale

Saturday briefing for Australian shoppers. This morning s Guardian sets out the five behaviour shifts driving grocery aisles and shopping carts in 2026: yes to protein yoghurt, home coffee machines and sports gear, no to furniture and full priced whitegoods, wait for the promo window on electronics. The SMH tallied the damage in numbers on Tuesday: JB Hi Fi, The Good Guys, Temple & Webster and Myer all under pressure and the ASX consumer discretionary index down 5 per cent in a single week. Coles reports Tuesday, Woolworths Wednesday, Wesfarmers Thursday. Amazon is back in the Federal Court over Prime Video. Google agentic AI checkout arrives in Australia first across APAC. Today s Top 5 opens with Costume Box at 75 per cent off.

Yes to Yoghurt, No to Furniture: Five Ways Aussies Are Shopping Now

Jonathan Barrett in The Guardian this morning pulled together the clearest map yet of how Australians are actually spending in 2026. Five patterns keep repeating across ASX reporting season results and grocery scan data. First, protein has taken over the fridge: Bega revenue climbed 6.7 per cent to 3.8 billion dollars, driven by a swing from cheese to protein yoghurt (which carries higher margin). Michael Harvey, senior dairy analyst at Rabobank, said the shift is powering the entire dairy category. Second, furniture and whitegoods are being deferred: Nick Scali flagged softer trading, and JB Hi Fi and The Good Guys called out lower comparable sales.

Third, discretionary shoppers are waiting for the promo window. When JB Hi Fi released a soft July trading update on Monday, the share price fell 10 per cent in a single session as investors read it as a signal that consumers are strictly buying on sale. Fourth, home coffee machines are cannibalising cafe spend: Breville reported double digit global revenue growth in its coffee category, and the Australian read across is that a 500 to 1500 dollar espresso machine now looks like a 12 month payback for a household that skips two cafe coffees a day. Fifth, sports gear and fan merch are on the up: Super Retail Group flagged a boost from FIFA Men s World Cup 2026 in North America and hopes for a similar effect from the 2027 FIFA Women s World Cup in Brazil, while Macpac slipped in a mild winter. For the weekend shopper the message is simple: staples and hobby purchases are fine, defer the big ticket item until you see a real headline percentage, and expect winter to spring changeover pricing to run deep this weekend.

Discretionary Cracks: 5 Per Cent Off the Sector in Five Days

Elizabeth Knight at The Sydney Morning Herald laid out the damage in numbers on Tuesday. The ASX consumer discretionary index fell 5 per cent over five trading days, three times the ASX200 s 1.7 per cent slide, as one retailer after another told the market that shoppers had walked away. JB Hi Fi Australian sales dropped 1.8 per cent in July and comparable sales dropped 2.9 per cent. The Good Guys reported sales down 12 per cent so far in FY27. Temple & Webster suffered the sharpest hit: net profit collapsed 62 per cent, revenue is down 13 per cent since the start of FY27, and the shares fell 18 per cent in a single day after full year results forced a downgrade to FY27 guidance.

Myer flagged cost of living pressure again, David Jones has extended its supplier payment terms to preserve cash, and even Breville (a genuine growth story with profit up 1.7 per cent) saw its shares fall 5 per cent on Wednesday because the market wanted more. The pattern is consistent with what the Guardian ran this morning: shoppers still spend on essentials, hobbies and small treats, but the moment a purchase can be deferred (couch, TV, kitchen renovation, washing machine), it is deferred. For the weekend shopper this is exactly why the deepest headline percentages this Saturday are landing in categories where the item is still under 200 dollars: costumes, dance shoes, bedding and jewellery gifts, all at 50 to 75 per cent off in today s Top 5.

Big Three Report Next Week: Coles Tuesday, Woolworths Wednesday, Wesfarmers Thursday

Next week is peak reporting week for the consumer facing giants. Coles Group reports FY26 on Tuesday 25 August, with IG Australia s Coles FY26 preview flagging consensus for sales of about 45.63 billion dollars (plus 2.9 per cent), EBIT of 2.30 billion (plus 8.9 per cent), NPAT of 1.22 billion (plus 13 per cent), EPS of 92.2 cents and a full year dividend of 77.1 cents. Woolworths reports Wednesday 26 August, and Wesfarmers reports Thursday 27 August. Motley Fool Australia put the combined consensus net profit for the three groups at more than 5.6 billion dollars.

All three groups use full year results to signal price investment and category strategy for the next six months. Watch Coles for Everyday Rewards and Own Brand plans plus commentary on protein and health food categories (following the Guardian trend). Watch Woolworths for Everyday Extra loyalty economics and Australian Food margin. Watch Wesfarmers for Bunnings comparable sales, Kmart Anko homewares depth (a soft launch of a standalone homewares format is understood to be under evaluation) and the Officeworks back to school plan. For household budgets the reporting outcomes drive the pricing shape of September to November, so it pays for shoppers to note what each CEO says on their conference call and hold off on any deferred category purchase until the direction is clear.

Amazon in the Federal Court: ACCC Prime Video Case Continues

The ACCC v Amazon Prime Video Federal Court proceeding (VID702 of 2026) continues to move through case management. The regulator alleges that Amazon Commercial Services included multiple unfair contract terms in annual Prime subscriptions between November 2023 and August 2025, then relied on some of those terms to introduce ads to Prime Video from July 2024 with only a 2 dollars 99 a month ad free upcharge as the alternative. ACCC chair Gina Cass Gottlieb said in the June announcement: “We allege that Amazon AU included multiple unfair terms in its contracts with Australian annual Prime subscribers, and it then relied on some of these terms to bring ads onto Amazon Prime Video. Consumers who wanted to avoid ads were left with no choice but to pay more to maintain the service they d initially signed up for.”

The regulator is seeking penalties, declarations and refunds on behalf of more than one million Australian annual Prime subscribers. Separately the toddler backpack safety proceeding (NSD905 of 2026) alleging non compliance on button battery warning labels remains before the court. Maximum penalty per contravention is the higher of 50 million dollars, three times the benefit obtained, or 30 per cent of adjusted turnover during the breach period. For shoppers the direct read across is caution on any overseas marketplace subscription that starts as one thing and becomes another, and it is why every store featured in today s Top 5 is Australian owned with local fulfilment.

Google Agentic AI Checkout: Australia First in APAC

Google switched on its Universal Checkout for AI shopping agents in Australia this week, making Australia the first market in Asia Pacific with the feature live, per iTnews and Ragtrader. Bunnings, Kogan, The Iconic, Adore Beauty and Petbarn are the launch partners. Shoppers using Google AI Mode can now compare product listings across those five retailers side by side and complete the checkout inside Google, using saved payment methods, without visiting each retailer s site individually.

The commercial risk for Australian retailers is that customer relationship data (which product a shopper actually chose, when, and at what price) starts to flow to Google rather than to the retailer. The offsetting shopper benefit is genuine time saving on repetitive commodity purchases (a specific power drill, a printer cartridge, a pet food subscription top up), and less price gaming across identical SKUs. For retailers that sell differentiated experiences and Australian owned brand storytelling, this changes very little; for retailers that sell generic price matched commodity, it accelerates margin compression. Worth watching how far this expands and how many independent Australian retailers opt in.