This holiday season, be prepared to shop early. According to Anthony L. Liuzzo, professor of business and economics at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA, who annually examines the holiday shopping season, consumers this year are not likely to find any last minute bargains.
The holiday retail season is a cat and mouse game between retailers and consumers. "If retailers overestimate demand, stores are overstocked and prices fall," he says. "If they underestimate, the prices won't. And at this very early stage, it looks like retailers are going to underestimate."
Liuzzo estimates this year to be another good year for retailers. "Overall, I think we're going to see an increase in sales of about six percent," he says, though he adds that it's difficult to determine this early in the season. Consumers are interested in spending money and buying high quality items, but are conscious of prices. Places like Wal-Mart and K-Mart will do well because of low prices, as will the high-end market providing luxury." Those not doing as well will be the stores in the middle who can't compete with Wal-Mart and K-Mart's low prices or the specialty stores' high quality.
Web sales may continue to cut into catalogue sales, but don't expect the traffic to let up at the local mall anytime soon. "People still like walking around the malls and seeing what they're buying," says Liuzzo. "In general web companies were not able to carry through with deliveries last year, and that's left a bad taste with many shoppers."
Liuzzo expects sales to be high for all high-tech products. "Anything related to computers will do well," he says. "DVDs and computer games and software should also do really well this year. All the high-tech products did well last year and should continue to do so."
For more information, please contact Liuzzo at 570-408-4709 (office) or at [email protected].
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