CNN (November 20)
Major retailer Target is noticing customer behavior that “is causing it to cast doubt on its future sales.” Store traffic “grew by about 2% year-over-year,” but customer “spending per purchase shrunk by 2%.” According to CEO Brian Cornell, customers are “’becoming increasingly resourceful in their shopping behaviors, waiting to buy until (the) last moment of need, focusing on deals and then stocking up when they find them.’”
Tags: CEO, Cornell, Customer behavior, Deals, Resourceful, Retailer, Sales, Shopping, Spending, Stocking up, Store traffic, Target, Waiting
Bloomberg (March 25)
A recent poll showed that “only 11.3 percent of Chinese had a favorable opinion of Japan.” Nevertheless, “Chinese tourists can’t seem to get enough of Japan.” This apparent contradiction may be explained by the fact that only five percent of Chinese travel overseas. Still, there “is reason to hope that China’s growing wave of outbound tourists will serve as a force for openness and tolerance—if only so they’ll have somewhere good to shop.”
USA Today (November 23)
“Thanksgiving used to be one of the few holidays retail workers could count on,” but in recent years more retailers have opened their doors to get a jump on sales. “No one needs to be able to buy a big-screen TV on Thanksgiving.” Consumers can wait until Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) when the Christmas sales traditionally commence. Americans should “spend Thanksgiving Day at home — not shopping — so retail workers can be at home, too.”
Tags: Black Friday, Christmas, Consumers, Holidays, Retail, Sales, Shopping, Thanksgiving, Workers
New York Times (December 24, 2013)
With postal services around the world struggling to survive, Canada is taking a step that few nations have dared. “With the digital handwriting ever clearer on the wall, the Canadian postal service has announced that it will end its remaining door-to-door letter deliveries over the next five years and focus on its one clear growth area: package deliveries to a public that is increasingly doing its shopping online.”
Tags: Canada, Deliveries, Letters, Online, Packages, Postal Service, Shopping, Survival
Forbes (December 4)
“Cyber Monday” (November 28) “was the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.25 billion.” The rest of the week brought 2 more days (November 29 & 30) with cyber sales exceeding $1 billion. All told, “online sales for the first full week of what is considered the true holiday shopping season grew 15 percent to a record $5.96 billion.”
Tags: Cyber Monday, Online, Record sales, Shopping
