Economists are tapping out their reactions to this morning's retail sales numbers. "Terrible", "unambiguously bad", and "oh so weak!" are some of the terms used to describe them.

Continuing price deflation looks to have weighed on the headline number. Sales were flat in the Sep month following a 0.5 per cent decline in August and a 0.3 per cent fall in July. The consensus forecast for September was for a 0.4 per cent gain.

That left quarterly nominal sales down 0.3 per cent, the weakest result since 2010.

However, Westpac economist Matthew Hassan points out, that was all due to an estimated 0.4 per cent decline in retail prices, the biggest quarterly drop since 2004.

Real retail sales - that is, volumes - were estimated to have risen slightly by 0.1 per cent over the quarter, slightly better than the market expectation of flat.

"Stepping back, the picture from the report is an unambiguously bad one for retailers – who are cutting prices but finding no traction with volumes," Hassan concludes.

"The picture is not quite as bad for consumers who get some advantage from lower prices and do not look to be cutting back on consumption quite as sharply as feared."

"Australian retail fails" was the headline on JP Morgan economist Tom Kennedy's note. He too pointed to price deflation as a key variable.

"It is important to remember that the retail sector is yet to feel the full effect of the entry of Amazon into the domestic market, which is widely tipped to place further downward pressure on margins and prices in the retail sector," Kennedy added.

"The fact that real retail were broadly stable in the third quarter even though retailers offered more discounts than usual shows just how unwilling households are to take their wallets out of their pockets," weighed in Capital Economics' Paul Dales.

"We suspect that a slowdown in consumption growth to 2 per cent will be one of the surprises of next year."

All of which lengthens the odds of rate hikes anytime soon.

"From a monetary policy perspective, the low inflationary pulse, which is reflecting soft wages growth and ongoing discounting in the retail sector, underpins our view that a rate hike is still a long way off," CBA economist Gareth Aird says.