Name: Here’s How the Rest of the Holiday Shopping Season Should Play Out
Uploaded: 2016-12-08
Duration: 7 min 58 s
Description: Three business execs make their predictions.

Forecasters have been predicting a strong holiday season for retailers, so far shoppers seemed to be pulling out their credit cards and spending as expected, but what is the rest of the season look like. For answers we've asked a panel of experts to join us in a game of facts or fiction. Tamara Gaffney is the principal analyst and director of Adobe Digital Insights. Jeff Glueck is the CEO of Foursquare. And Lila Snyder is the President of Global Ecommerce for Pitney Bowes. Welcome, all of you. Are you ready? [ LAUGH ] Absolutely. [ CROSSTALK ] Lets do this. In other words I'm gonna read some statements and you gonna hold up your cards and tell me if you think its fact or fiction. Here we go. According to the National Retail Federation more shoppers buy items online than in stores over the things got on weekend This trend will continue throughout the season. Fact or fiction? Agreed! Fiction [ LAUGH ] Lila, tell me why. Yeah, I think about it differently. Consumers are really blending the experience between the in- store physical and the digital experience. And so it's really hard to know whether the purchase, even if it was consummated in a store or online, it's really both places are influencing it. Okay, and Jeff, what do you think? Well the U. S. Census data says 92 % of commerce Is offline, in the real world. And so, you have to start right there. While most commerce happens in the real world, there's lot's of reasons people love shopping in the real world, although, eCommerce is growing very, very fast. Right. Okay, and Tamara? I think, it has much more to do with growth of revenue, more so, than where shoppers are shopping. To your point, they're If there is no digital, there is only shopping now, and it includes everything. But 11 % growth here every year is our projection for online and about 3. 6 % it was for the whole marketplace. So lots of growth in online, but not necessarily as many shoppers. Growing faster, but not as fun I would say. Depends on what you like. [ LAUGH ] Convenient though. Okay, number two. If you haven't done your holiday shopping by now, you've missed the best deals of the season. Fact or fiction? Tamara, you say fact. I'm interested. Yeah, absolutely. So the best deals of the season according to our digital price index which is mapping the prices every month, kind of like the CPI is, shows that the absolute best time to buy most things Is Thanksgiving weekend, and then the prices go up. So there's a couple of categories, that even before Thanksgiving weekend. But right now, we're seeing the prices starting to rise in terms of the level of discounts. Hm, interesting. So, it was Thanksgiving weekend. Layla, I'll switch to you, what do you say? Yeah, we're seeing a stretching of the deals. Even before Thanksgiving. So if you look at the couple of days before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving, Many of our retailers were up 25 % or more in those days leading up to the Black Friday weekend. And even just today I have a dozen offers in my inbox the deals are still coming, we think they're going to keep coming right up until the holiday. And Jeff you guys have data that shows it's actually about where you go and when. That impacts pricing is that right. Well, it's also about the time to avoid the lines. And so, there are certain places to go to avoid lines. But on the price side, we're seeing the stretching that Leila's seeing. And so, consumers believe that there's deals throughout the season. Even though there may be certain categories that happen on Black Friday. There seeing great deals throughout Season, so the peak shopping days are actually that final Saturday before Christmas in the real world, and December 23rd last year was the peak shopping day. So there's a lot of procrastinators out there who still think they're gonna get a deal. And department stores peak late in the season, so there's still a lot of good deals on department stores late in the season. I'll be right with them at the very end. Okay, number three. Last Minute shoppers visit the same stores and shop for the same items as other shoppers. Jeff fact or fiction? Fiction, Jeff I'm gonna start with you. Well we're a location intelligence data signs company. So we looked at this from our 50 million users and it turns out that people shop early and people shop late have a different demographic and sort of psychology make up. So early on you have your black Friday Bargain hunters. They tend to be younger. A lot of millennials. About half are under 34. Think of the energy for Black Friday. [ LAUGH ] They're very savvy. They're ready to brave the crowds. They want the deals. They have a lot of college debt. So they are particularly looking for places like Old Navy and Payless Shoes. And sort of discount offers. Late in the season, the mix of people who shop is later. They tend to be a little older, a little more affluent. They are willing to splurge. And they waited a little long, so they have a lot of items to check off that list. Interesting, all right, we're gonna speed it up a little bit, so Tamara, let me just get your comments on this one. Let's talk about jewelry for a minute. The jewelry category sees the lowest price day on Thanksgiving, and yet most of the bulk of purchasing happens right before the last day to ship. [ LAUGH ] Wonder why, who the Who the buyers of that would be. So yeah, definitely toys and electronics earlier and other types of goods later in the season. Okay, speaking of toys and electronics, the next question is electronics and toys are the season's most popular gifts. Fact or fiction? Fact, Lila let's here what you have to say. Yeah, I mean look toys and electronics are always big but we're also seeing a lot of demand for handbags, jewelry in particular. And also unique items. We find smaller retailers are doing really well with unique and specialty items you can't get anywhere else. And Tamara, you also say fact. Yeah, the prices and everything are so low this year that We're seeing the toys and electronics category at 25 % discounts. You can get get an Ipad for less than $ 200. You can get a Kindle for less than $ 40. They're blowing out the electronics category. And toys, toys are always hot. We don't have Star Wars this year so, not as hot as it was last year. A lot of Ipads under the tree this year. But Jeff, you are refusing to show anything, why? I'm not going to answer because at Foursquare, we don't necessarily know people. You're rebelling. [ CROSSTALK ] So what I will add to these very intelligent experts is if you're gonna buy electronics you wanna go on a Sunday night. That is when to avoid the lines. And if you're gonna buy toys, a perennial favorite Friday afternoon, Friday early evening, avoid the lines those are the best times. And if you're gonna buy women's clothing it's Monday so those are the times to go. Or buy online. Right. [ LAUGH ] You know but if you buy mine, the kids can't. Sit on Santa's lap and the gifts might not get there in time. So there's a lot of reasons people love online and there's a lot of reason they still love the social Excitement of going to the mall. I learned a few years ago, the secret best day of the year to shop, Halloween night. [ LAUGH ] I'm telling you, every store is empty. It was amazing. Okay, our last question, big box retailers will be the winners of the holiday retail season. Fact or fiction? Lila, fiction why? I think if you look at total sales that probably will be true. But if you're looking at growth I'll go back to my small and medium sized retailer point that I said before. I really think those businesses are doing really well, we see it in our data. Especially because they now, through connected platforms like eBay and others, they're connected to consumers around the world. Okay, Jeff, quickly. So on the physical shopping side, department stores are down 7 %. Overall we see traffic down offline about 3. 5 %. The Big Box, the Target, the Walmart, the Big Lots are up in low single digits so they are the winners of the offline category by far Okay, good to know. Now we do not typically do this during games of fact or fiction. That concludes our questions but Since you're all three here and you're such great experts in this particular field, I'd love to have each of you be with us with one final thought. Tamara, let's start with you. It's all about screens again this year, televisions, iPods, phones, lots more screens coming into the market next year, lots more buying opportunities for digital commerce. Okay, Jack? One of the things that we're excited about is physical shopping as an industry is stabilizing. It's only down about 3 and a half percent. NRF is down 3. 7 so our data was accurate once more. Last year it was down double digits. They've had a rocky ride the past year, so that's really good to see. It's been a much better year for real world. Retailers this year. Interesting, all right, and Lilah, final word. Consumers are broadening their aperture in terms of where they're looking. We see a lot of consumers looking across borders. In particular US retailers are having great success this year in India, in Australia, and other markets around the world. Interesting, broadening the aperture. Well thanks to all of you for being here. What a fantastic game. And happy shopping. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Three business execs make their predictions.