Michael Zamora / AP
Many retailers are urging shoppers to play Santa for themselves this year.
By Martha C. White
Last year Hyundai entertained ? or annoyed ? television viewers with advertisements featuring?carol-singing hipsters. This year, the automaker is taking a different tack?in early radio ads, urging listeners to "give yourself a gift" of a new Hyundai this holiday season.
Retailers, struggling with sluggish consumer spending are pulling out all the stops to get shoppers, including pushing gift-buying for your best friend ?- yourself.
Apparel retailer J Crew debuted a campaign with the tag line "To: You ? From: You." Shoppers can barely escape the "buy it for yourself" message on?the website of online footwear megastore Zappos.com: Nearly every holiday-themed landing page includes text urging browsers to pick up a pair of boots or something else for themselves. Even Starbucks ran a "One for you, one for me" holiday promotion.
"I think they're trying to hit core customers any way they can hit them," says Sam Poser, managing director at brokerage Sterne Agee.
According to a National Retail Federation survey, roughly 60 percent of shoppers plan to buy for themselves or purchase?"non-gift" merchandise this holiday season. Although consumers are predicted?to spend roughly $15 less on gifts and seasonal items this year, the amount being set aside for self-gifting has gone up by around $18.
"The consumer is telling us it may be the first time they set foot in stores all year," says Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at NPD Group, a market research company. "It becomes incredibly important to tap into that self-purchasing and non-gifting opportunity." Prior to the recession, 26 percent of all holiday purchases were intended for the buyer, Cohen says. In 2008, that dropped to 9 percent, but is projected to rebound to 16 percent?this year.?
"We're trained to shop at this time of year. We wait for the signs to go up and we capitalize on the sales," says Mike Matacunas, CEO of the Parker Avery Group, a retail consulting firm. "I think there's a pent-up demand for products and purchases."
Consumers put off buying for much of the year in what Matacunas calls the "new normal" of retail, which means stores are under intense pressure to get people to buy items for themselves. Framing these purchases as gifts creates a more indulgent frame of mind that helps shoppers justify their self-splurges. "Getting that tone right makes people respond," he says. "They go out and they say, 'I want that. I deserve that.'"?
Retailers are also tapping into this trend with buy-one-get-one offers and free-gift-with-purchase promotions, says Alison Lipson, senior retail and apparel analyst at market research firm Mintel. "They're giving one piece of the gift and keeping one themselves."?
Another version of the self-gifting trend is the growing concept of the "family gift." "How many people were buying a big-screen TV as a gift? They may have called it a family gift, but it was a gift to themselves," Cohen says. Retailers hope this big family gift will wind up being augmented with smaller, individual gifts by the time presents are exchanged.?
Cohen says electronics are a hot area for family gift purchases, and categories related to hosting or entertaining are also ripe for this tactic. Best Buy pushes an Xbox in its online holiday gift guide with the headline, "More family fun for everyone."
Sure, a buyer could have somebody else's family in mind when dropping $400 on the console, but it's unlikely. National Retail Federation data shows that people plan to spend roughly that amount on gifts for their immediate families; they say they'll spend far less on gifts for friends, co-workers and others.?
Positioning an investment in household items as a holiday splurge is a popular message retailers are sending this year. "More ways to make the holidays and every day easier," reads the copy in Best Buy's online catalog above a stainless steel set of kitchen appliances. Target's website urges shoppers to "Get your house ready to celebrate," next to links for bath, bedding and furniture offerings.
These two brands make a glancing effort to link buying, say, a new washer-dryer set with holiday entertaining, but wrapping up these items and placing them under a tree is almost beside the point. Analysts say self and family gifting dovetails with a broader push by retailers to carve out Black Friday as a separate shopping event from holiday gift-buying.?
"Certainly part of that is tied to Christmas, but part of that is spreading out that Friday," says Will Ander, senior partner at retail marketing firm McMillanDoolittle, LLP. "It's gotten so big it was turning customers off."
Black Friday creep is taking place across retail categories. Some stores roll out their sale prices early in the week or make bargain-priced items available online. "Spreading it out more allows it to be more convenient if customers want to come early," Ander says. Part of this is an ongoing race among retailers; it pays to be first out of the gate before Americans have blown through their holiday budgets. But another reason is that there literally only so many items you can pass through a checkout station over the course of a day, Ander says.
If marketers can imprint onto the collective consumer mind that Black Friday is when you buy things for yourself and your family, either before or in conjunction with gift purchases, they'll have effectively created a new retail "holiday" ? ideally without cannibalizing seasonal gift purchases.?
The danger retailers face is they will have shifted shoppers' purchasing patterns to a narrow slice of the calendar.
"Retailers have trained customers that the best deals are during the holidays," says Alison Levy, a retail strategist at consulting company Kurt Salmon. "Retailers might like the looks of this now, but I certainly think there's some risk that [customers are] pulling forward some of next year's spend. This could make January and February of next year tougher than usual."
geoffrey mutai wes welker brandon jacobs brandon jacobs les miles les miles lsu
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.