One of the Australian economy’s biggest surprises is the continuing strength of its retail sector.

Despite the country’s below-trend economic growth, difficult job market, and consumer sentiment that’s been down in the dumps until recently, Australians have continued to open their wallets.

Indeed, retail sales grew for the ninth consecutive month in February, with sales growth exceeding economists’ consensus forecast in six of those months.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), retail sales rose 0.7% month over month in February, which was well ahead of the 0.4% increase economists had expected.

Interestingly, consumers have looked past their doldrums (or are perhaps compensating for them) by spending at a faster pace than they did when their confidence was considerably higher.

Over the trailing year, the Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment has produced an average reading of 95.8. A level below 100 means pessimists outnumber optimists.

Nevertheless, during the past 12 months, retail turnover grew at an average rate of 0.4% per month.

The period covering October 2009 through October 2010 was the last time optimists outnumbered pessimists for more than a year.

During that time, the consumer confidence index produced an average reading of 115.10, which is not only well above the key threshold of 100, but a significant 20 percentage points above the trailing-year average.

Despite such comparatively rosy sentiment, consumers, perhaps chastened by the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC), were keeping a tight rein on spending, with retail sales averaging just 0.2% per month during that period.

And even at the height of the resource boom in 2011 and 2012, retail sales still lagged the trailing-year’s numbers.

Of course, there are some key differences between then and now.

For one, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been on a rate-cutting cycle since late 2011, lowering its benchmark cash rate from a post-GFC high of 4.75% to an all-time low of 2.25%.

And the price of oil, based on global benchmark Brent crude, has fallen by more than 50% from its trailing-year high. When it comes to consumer spending, some economists have said that lower prices at the fuel pump are equivalent to two quarter-point rate cuts.

Then there’s the wealth effect. In addition to rising real estate values, the S&P/ASX 200 Index is trading at a post-GFC high and is just 9.2% below its all-time high, which it hit back in September 2007.

So what are some of the areas that have compelled consumers to drop cash as of late?

Getting back to the February numbers, spending on food (up 1.2%) and household goods (up 1.8%) were the main drivers of this performance.

Naturally, the household goods category has been a major beneficiary of Australia’s housing bubble. And while furniture and hardware sales have been strong, sales of electronic goods have been on an absolute tear since the September release of the iPhone 6.

Sales in the electrical and electronic goods category have jumped 14.7% since August, while sales of hardware and furniture are up 5.9% and 4.9%, respectively, over that same period.

One of our favorite Australian retailers has been benefitting from this trend.

Shares of JB Hi-Fi Ltd. (ASX: JBH), which sells consumer electronics and household appliances at its 185 stores in Australia, have climbed 32.5% on a prices basis in local currency terms since their interim low in mid-October.

That’s more than double the gain of the S&P/ASX 200 over that same period. And despite the continuing decline in the Australian dollar, JB Hi-Fi’s shares are even ahead of the S&P 500 by 5.6 percentage points when its performance is expressed in U.S. dollar terms.

And that’s before accounting for the compounding effect from the stock’s 4.6% yield.

In early February, when the company reported results for the first half of fiscal 2015 (ended Dec. 31), management also noted that the new year had gotten off to a strong start, with sales and operational earnings ahead of the year-ago period.