So, how’s that holiday retail sector shaping up?

Posted on | November 18, 2008 |

It is sometimes amazing to me the number of press releases that can pile up in my inbox in the course of a couple of days.

It’s an even more overwhelming phenomenon at any point in time when it seems as if everybody is worried about the same thing.

What everybody seems to be worried about right now — or, at least, everybody who has been writing me emails lately — is the 2008 holiday shopping season.

That’s because of headlines like: Target’s Earnings Tumble 24 Percent!

That sounds pretty dire until you read the article and discover that Target’s management is full of woe because they only had $369 million in profits during the third quarter. How very dreadful.

It does make you wonder about Minneapolis, though.

But back to my inbox.

I learn from that handy electronic receptacle that sales of gift cards, still the most-often requested gift (and really, you can’t beat it for everybody on your “list of people you can never figure out what to buy for”), are expected to decline during this holiday season. Evidently, fewer people plan to buy them and, among those who will buy them, they plan to buy cheaper ones.

Why?

Preliminary gift card research conducted for NRF by BIGresearch found that the main reason shoppers plan to buy fewer gift cards this holiday season was because they feel the cards are impersonal (22.7%), that they would rather stretch their dollar by buying merchandise on sale (10.9%), and because they do not want to buy a card with expiration dates or added fees (9.8%). Other shoppers say they simply do not know which gift card a person would want (7.7%), while a small number of people say that they are worried the gift recipient will lose it (3.9%) or that the retailer will go out of business (3.1%).

While the NRF noted earlier this year that about 40% of shoppers had gotten started by Halloween last year, it is also worth nothing that almost another 40% (38.3%, to be precise) started in November. More recent research has found that 72% of shoppers have completed 10% of their shopping as of Monday, while only 2.2% of them are finished.

So, what’s everybody waiting for? Black Friday, says the NRF. That’s when all the holiday sales are expected to kick into gear and cash-strapped consumers appear to be waiting for it.

And, while it’s good to accept credit cards on your web site, don’t stick your nose up in the air at debit/check cards or good, old-fashioned cash (via PayPal or other such peer to peer payment system). The NRF’s consumer research found that fewer consumers plan to rely on credit to pay for their holiday purchases this year.

(Gee, I wonder why?)

And, finally, it’s a sign of the times that Shop.org (the NRF’s e-commerce arm) has redesigned its CyberMonday.org web site to emphasize sales and promotions for bargain hungry holiday shoppers. Of course, that won’t matter to most microbusiness owners since you have to be a member to sell your stuff there.

But it’s a cautionary sign: people are expected to be pinching their pennies until they scream in pain this holiday season. The wise microbusiness retailer will plan their sales, promotions, marketing and landing pages to take that into account.


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Dawn Rivers Baker, microbusiness journalistDawn Rivers Baker, aka The Journal Blogger, is the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal, and the self-proclaimed Socrates of the small business blogosphere. See her official bio to learn more.


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