Men continue to procrastinate on Holiday shopping
With their holiday shopping days numbered, many men are still checking off items on their gift lists, according to the latest National Retail Federation survey. The latest installment of the NRF 2005 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that entering last weekend 17.9% of men had not yet begun their holiday shopping, compared to 12.5% of women. Overall, 30.83 million consumers had not yet started their shopping.
According to survey results, the average consumer had completed 54.6% of his or her holiday shopping, up from 46.3% in 2004. The survey also found that 12.4% of consumers had completely finished their shopping and another 22.2% had completed more than three-fourths of their shopping.
Of those who had begun their holiday shopping, 46.1% had already purchased books, CDs, DVDs, videos or video games, and 44.4% had already purchased clothing or clothing accessories. Other popular gift items purchased included toys (37.1%), gift cards or gift certificates (27.3%) and consumer electronics or computer related accessories (23.5%).
"With Christmas on a Sunday this year, many retailers are gearing up for high traffic this weekend, when many consumers will hit the stores to finish their holiday shopping," said Phil Rist, VP/BIGresearch. "Retailers customarily see high sales the week before Christmas and are preparing themselves for even more foot traffic this Saturday when even the worst procrastinators will be hitting the stores."
Close to half of consumers polled planned on doing the remainder of their holiday shopping either at discount stores (42.1%) or department stores (41.2%). Consumers are also planning to wrap up their shopping at specialty stores, including clothing, toy or electronics stores (30.8%) and online (30.2%). When purchasing gifts, 32.9% of consumers planned to pay with a debit or check card, 29.9% with a credit card and 29.0% of consumers plan to pay in cash.
NRF continues to project that holiday sales will rise 6.0% this year to 439.5 billion. November retail sales increased 7.4%.
Good Morning - Gain a personal edge on today's business day. Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
