News notes on the holiday shopping season – so far

Posted on | December 16, 2008 | Comments Off

There were a few words of encouragement in my inbox this morning for our microbusiness friends in the retail sector, courtesy of the National Retail Federation.

If you’ve been looking at your numbers so far this holiday season and beginning to feel the first tinges of despair, fear not! According to their 2008 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average person had completed less then half their Christmas shopping by the second week in December.

As a matter of fact, there are 41 million American adults out there who haven’t even gotten started yet, with the biggest procrastinators to be found among men (20.7%) and 33-45 year-olds (20.9%). Only 8% of shoppers say they are finished buying things.

What that means for you is that there is still quite a bit of money to be spent or made, depending on your point of view.

“Procrastinators are in good company this year because a shorter window between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year means that the holidays have snuck up on many of us,” said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin in the press release. “Retailers will try to manage the rush of last-minute shoppers with expanded hours, extra employees to stock shelves, and a lot of sales and promotions.”

A couple of other interesting or useful items from the survey: people are buying practical gifts rather than fanciful ones, they are preferring cash or debit cards to pay for them, and the trusty gift card is not as popular this year as it was last year – which may explain all the procrastination among the men, if they’re having trouble figuring out what to buy.

(Here’s a hint: if somebody decides they’re only spending $15 on a gift for so-and-so, and the retailer requires you to spend a minimum of $25 on a gift card, that person won’t buy the gift card. People are sticking to their budgets this year; if you want to sell those gift cards, be flexible.)

A third of these last minute shoppers are planning on hitting specialty stores to do at least some of their still-incomplete shopping and a little more than four in ten will shop online. You online microbusiness retailers should make sure you have all your shipping ducks in a row.

Top retail categories this year are clothing, books, CDs, DVDs, video and video games, toys and electronics. It looks like what’s selling this year is small, affordable without credit, and inexpensive to ship.

No surprises there, huh?


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Category: E-Commerce, The Economy


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