Beemer, UBS: Holiday Sales Appear Weaker than Last Year

December 9, 2009  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on December 10, 2009 Holiday retail sales appear weaker this year than last, according to a recent survey by America's Research Group and UBS.

The survey found that of 95.1 percent of consumers not shopping last weekend said they will wait until Dec. 24 to find more items on sale.

€œThe shopping season is a repeat of last year,€ said Britt Beemer, chief executive officer and founder of ARG.  €œMore shoppers are waiting for better deals and stores just aren€™t giving them big enough discounts.€

Beemer said consumers want 60 percent to 70 percent off in order to buy.

Wal-Mart continued to draw shoppers with 72.2 percent saying that they have shopped there this year compared to 69.1 percent last year.

Discount retailers in general continued to do well, with 27.6 percent of consumers saying that they spent the most at Wal-Mart over the weekend, compared to 25.7 percent last year.  Almost 10 percent (9.9 percent) of consumers (compared to 6.5 percent in 2008) spent most at JCPenney while 5.1 percent spent the most at K-Mart up from 2.6 percent last year.

Only 3.82 percent of parents have finished shopping for their children€™s gifts.

Shopping levels on Cyber Monday were flat at 28.7 percent of consumers saying they shopped on-line, compared with 27.1 percent last year.

Conducted Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 at ARG headquarters in Charleston, S.C., the ARG/UBS Christmas Retail Survey consisted of telephone interviews with 1,000 consumers. The error factor is plus or minus 3.8 percent.