I read an article on my Yahoo! homepage today and it wasn't the greatest news but it's exactly what I have been seeing lately. Click here to see the article. I love to shop although I am very thrifty and I am pretty good about not impulsive shopping...although even I do hit the Coach outlet once in a blue moon...
The article talks about how people are still at the stores and still 'shopping' but somewhere between picking up the items in the cart and swiping the debit/credit cards, the items get left behind. This causes stores to need staff to do more work to keep the store tidy and organized while they are not making as much money for those non-sales. I work once a week for three hours a week at a store in Myrtle Beach. It's an upscale women's boutique, selling Brighton, Onex, Vera Bradley and other mid to higher end products. I know to some of you that isn't higher end, but Myrtle Beach is the capital of Wings and Eagles beach stores where you get three shirts for $10 and you can fill your car for $50. I have worked there for six summers at varying hours and since I became a Realtor I'm down to just 3 hours a week (gotta keep the discount and it's fun to work retail when you know it's only for a very limited time) so I have seen quite the spectrum of tourists and shoppers. This summer there is just as much traffic through the store as there has been in past years, and a lot of people are buying but they are buying $10 items, fighting me on sale prices, changing their minds at the register, asking for free items with purchases and other behavior I haven't seen in past years. So I am just as busy for my three hours of work ringing up customers but instead of Brighton purses ($200) and Onex shoes ($80), people are buying Vera Bradley lanyards ($10) and flip flops ($20). It's very interesting to watch how long people stay in the store to decide on what items they are going to purchase...and how much time a salesgirl will stay with one person picking out a collection of jewelry and then end up with a pair of earrings or nothing - saying they will come back another time and get it. So the owner still needs just as many people working because of the volume of shoppers but their sales are not comparable to years past.
People are still walking around with shopping bags, but the contents are much less expensive and the bags are much lighter than in the past. In a way it's good people are not overextending so much and spending more than they should, but they are still going through all the motions of shopping without the end positive result for the merchant.
This is my favorite quote from the article I linked: People "want to be in the act of shopping, but they don't want to be in the act of buying," said Joel Bines, a director at AlixPartners, a turnaround consultant.
I love to shop and am still stimulating the economy every chance I get but my shopping trips have lessened slightly from last summer...although that could be attributed for my love of online shopping as well. =) Happy Shopping!
We are still busy though selling houses (although much more lower priced homes), so people are tightening budgets but making big purchases! What are you seeing in your area in terms of spending habits?
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