Holiday Shoppers Focus on Bargains
With a week and a half until Christmas, shoppers jammed malls over the weekend, snapping up bargains on clothing and electronics.
Still, jitters about jobs and the economy damped sales, frustrating merchants who had been counting on a big pickup following lackluster shopping after the Thanksgiving weekend.
That means there will be more pressure on retailers in the final stretch to meet their already modest sales goals for the holiday season.
“This week is going to be a big battle to get consumers to spend,” said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group, based in Charleston, S.C., noting that sales on Saturday and Sunday, though solid, still fell short of expectations.
Consumers were being choosy with a focus on bargains.
“People are still buying, but are more aware of prices,” said Amanda Loughry, a store manager at Pier 1 Imports in Towson, Md.
She said small gifts already wrapped with netting and ribbon marked down slightly to $10 and $5 were selling quickly.
Merchants are finding themselves in the same spot they were a year ago, dependent on late buying to lift sales in a sluggish season. Retailers got a last-minute reprieve in 2001, but there is no guarantee that will happen again.
Michael P. Niemira, vice president of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, believes that if the last-minute spending surge doesn’t meet expectations, sales will fall below the 2% same-store sales gain expected for the November-December period. Same-store sales -- those at stores open at least a year -- are considered the best indicator of a retailer’s health.
Madison Riley, principal at retail consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates, already is lowering his estimate for the holiday season, saying same-store sales gains will be in the 2% to 3% range, instead of the 2% to 4% range.
Major stores were scheduled to report their weekly results, including sales from this weekend, today.
Meanwhile, online sales, which peaked Thursday at $288 million, showed a less dramatic decline than expected. They rose 73% on Saturday to $263 million from the same time a year ago, reported ComScore Networks. The figures exclude travel sales, such as airline tickets.
At least one mall operator -- Taubman Centers Inc. -- reported a strong uptick in sales.
“We are definitely pleased with traffic and sales,” said Karen MacDonald, spokeswoman at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Taubman, which operates 31 malls in 13 states, including the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. A survey of about one-third of the company’s mall centers reported an increase of low to mid single digits this weekend, compared with a year ago, she said.
Tom Williams, a company spokesman at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said, “We are pleased with what we are seeing in the stores.”
The sluggish economy has damped sales even at Wal-Mart, which said last week that same-store sales gain for December will be at the low end of the company’s 3% to 5% range.
Tom Garofalo of Beachwood, N.J., who was shopping at the Ocean County Mall in Toms River, N.J., said, “I’ll rein in the spending” until the recession passes.
