‘Tis the Season to be Frugal
All the numbers on holiday shopping aren’t in yet, but at this point it looks like the season will be much like last year’s. That is certainly not good news, but I suspect it won’t turn out as badly as it could have, given a lengthy recession and an unemployment rate exceeding 10%.
We know that November sales reports showed a modest 1.3% increase, which was more than expected. A Zogby Interactive survey completed last week found half of U.S. adults saying they planned to spend less this holiday season. That number is very similar to those we found asking the same question in telephone polls in both 2007 and 2008. So we should expect 2009 final holiday sales totals to not be very different than those of the two previous and weak buying seasons.
Read the rest of John Zogby column at Forbes.com.
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I was just reviewing your remarks on luxury buying on the other blog. Last week, we stopped by our “better” mall, to look around and have coffee with friends [a cheap alternative to lunch] and the number of people with shopping bags from the better stores surprised me. The look of excitement on peoples’ faces was very different from the stressed out looks of shoppers at my local Big Lots. I believe you are being overly optimistic regarding the American public’s course change regarding consumption. Those who “have” will go right back to consuming. Those who “have not”, then have a choice of whether to be bitter or make lemonade. How will this effect this year’s sales? It will be interesting to see.