Christmas Shopping is Still Alive & Well…

….but it is moving toward bargains, value and online.

I find the Guardian newspaper a real gem - it has so many interesting and different articles. One article that I found most interesting was one about the UK’s Poundland and bargain hunting and shopping.

The article talks about a particular Poundland shop in Croydon. It said that this particular outlet “serves nearly 30,000 customers a week and they spend an average of £5.98 each, which means this 6,000 sq ft space is raking in more than £9m a year.” 9 million a year?! And with its recession beating prices, even the price aware shopper will take a browse through it.

This got me thinking about US shopping and how American Holiday Spending was coming along. Everytime you turn on the news, the American economy has taken a further nosedive. Thanksgiving weekend shopping is traditionally one of the busiest weekends of shopping in the retail calendar.

Pricegrabber.com, which is a price-comparison site, reported that there was an increase of 11% in traffic to the site compared to Black Friday 2007.  Black Friday is the term of reference for the Friday after Thanksgiving.

They revealed in their press release ” that economic conditions motivate value-driven consumers [and] that online consumers are taking advantage of promotions on popular electronics.”

It’s not alone in seeing an increase in traffic. The US National Retail Federation reported that an increase of 25 million people visited stores and websites compared to last year!

According to their press release “Shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over the weekend, up 7.2 percent over last year’s $347.55.” (The weekend was Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected for Sunday).

I’d love to see Irish statistics to see how Irish sales are faring. But it is fair to say that holiday shoppers are out there, eager to buy, but have value on their mind. Which isn’t a bad thing - maybe we all got carried away over the past several Christmasses.

Retailers next year ought to look at their propositions and USPs - unique selling points- and maybe it’s time to offer real value to customers and not inflated profit margins.