Wringing in the holiday season
/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme- mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme- mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme- mso-bidi- mso-bidi-theme-} Why are retailers crying the blues over holiday sales that have not yet been rung up?
They are setting themselves up with a mindset that can only bring nothing but unneeded angst and agita.
This woe-is-me attitude just doesn”™t fly in this current economic environment.
The thought should be how can we do better.
Time to man-up and woman-up.
Despite the doom and gloom, good business practices still apply and those who put their mind to it can grow during a downturn.
Survival of the fittest, to be sure.
So why is there all this negative outlook by retailers on the upcoming holiday season?
One problem is the mainstream media”™s preoccupation with it from business talk shows to man-on-the-street interviews from shoppers whose honesty ”“ in all honesty ”“ cannot be trusted. One retailer said it expects a tough time, so that means all retailers will be suffering and it just snowballs from there. One customer tells a TV crew that she”™s cutting back on her shopping and she becomes the standard-bearer for all consumers.
Give us a break.Â
Part of the problem comes from the National Retail Federation, a trade and advocacy group. In its forecast for the 2008 holiday season, it said to expect “meager sales gains of 2.2 percent.” Want to guess dear reader what that 2.2 percent amounts to? Well, that would be just a “meager” $470.4 billion.
Sounds horrible. What a miserable outlook.
How many people do you know who turn a profit in their business and complain? OK, we know them, too. But our point is if a bad season is a multibillion-dollar profit, things can”™t be that bad.
“This gain would fall well below the 10-year average of 4.4 percent holiday sales growth and would represent the slowest growth since 2002, when holiday sales rose 1.3 percent,” according to the NRF.
Slow growth, but not the end of the world.
“Current financial pressures and a lack of confidence in the economy will force shoppers to be very conservative with their holiday spending,” NRF chief economist Rosalind Wells said. “We expect consumers to be frugal this season and less willing to splurge on discretionary items.”
Still, $470 billion is nothing to sneeze at.
There are a number of other factors that come into play, such as the dropping cost of gasoline and heating oil, that provide a psychological boost to consumers and in turn if they”™re feeling better at the pumps, they”™re going to feel better when they head to the malls.
In a subsequent poll, the NRF found “consumers plan to spend an average of $832.36 on holiday-related shopping, up a paltry 1.9 percent over last year”™s $816.69.”
First meager, now paltry.
The NRF might need to choose its words a bit better, especially when billions of dollars are being discussed. No need to anger the customers.