Retailers Try For Edge With Holiday Shoppers

by Wendy Kaufman

November 2, 2009

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November 2, 2009

The holiday retail season is here. Last year retailers got slammed with a lot of unsold inventory as the economy collapsed, and they don't want that to happen again. So this time around, they are carrying less merchandise, and are trying to lure customers in early.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

The holiday retail season is upon us, with retailers promoting Black Friday-like deals - black as in getting out of the red. The Friday after Thanksgiving has traditionally been the start of the holiday shopping season. This year, retailers aren't waiting, as NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

WENDY KAUFMAN: Last Friday at precisely 5 p.m., Sears officially launched its Black Friday Now holiday campaign with huge discounts on selected items -tools, work boots, even diamonds.

Ms. MAUREEN DEAL(ph) (Manager, Sears): I really love these earrings. Look at these. They sparkle.

KAUFMAN: Maureen Deal, manager of the Sears store in Redmond, Washington, picks up a pair of small diamond earrings. The regular price: $260. The Black Friday price: 80 bucks.

Ms. DEAL: They are three-eighths of a carat total weight diamond studs. And if that doesn't bring footprints into the store I don't know what will.

KAUFMAN: Last year, retailers got slammed with lots of unsold inventory as the economy collapsed. They don't want that to happen again. So this time around, they're carrying less merchandise. And, says Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation, they're trying to lure customers in early.

Ms. ELLEN DAVIS (Vice President, National Retail Federation): What's so interesting right now in retail is the dance that's happening between stores and shoppers. On the one hand, retailers have been preparing for the holiday season all year. They've been pulling back on inventory, so they're telling people to shop now.

KAUFMAN: On the other hand, she says, consumers are conditioned to wait until the last possible moment to buy in order to get the lowest prices. And how will they find those prices? Increasingly, they're using tools like Twitter and Facebook and their mobile phone.

Jeff Fisher, a retail strategist at a firm called Wongdoody, is standing in a consumer electronics store in downtown Seattle. He's showing off a mobile phone application that allows you to compare prices instantly.

Mr. JEFF FISHER (Director of Retail and Environment Design, Wongdoody): And I'm just simply scanning a bar code using the ShopSavvy app. And as soon as it's read the bar code, a green light pops up and it'll tell me where else I can get this exact same product at all the available prices.

KAUFMAN: Fisher says retailers will also be embracing mobile technology, for example: delivering coupons directly to your smartphone so you'll have them in the palm of your hand.

A survey done for the National Retail Federation suggests that consumers will each spend about $680 on holiday-related items. And the NRF estimates that overall sales will be down about 1 percent. That's not great, but it's much better than last year. Still, with unemployment now at its highest level in more than a quarter of a century, no one really knows how much consumers will spend.

We asked shoppers, David and Laurel Stitzel(ph), what they were thinking.

Mr. DAVID STITZEL: It's going to feel different. It already feels like we're looking for more deals or concerned about future income and all of that. I mean, you see headlines about the economy recovering or not recovering. And so it's all very much in the front of our mind.

KAUFMAN: Laurel Stitzel added that her family was cutting back on the number of gifts they would exchange this year. Retailers can only hope that their aggressive pricing and marketing will keep consumers from pulling back too far.

Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.

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