NEW YORK — Never mind all the pressure this season from the nation’s stores to do holiday shopping early with such tactics as marathon shopping hours and other come-ons. Meghan Donovan did it her way.
The San Francisco resident started her research in early November, thumbing through catalogs, checking out stores and searching online. Then she waited, and doesn’t pounce on anything unless the item is down at least 30 percent.
“I definitely do a lot of research and then narrow it down. I would have spent more money if I shopped earlier,” said Donovan, who planned to finish her efforts today.
With Christmas coming Tuesday, merchants found themselves in the same situation as in recent years: waiting for those last-minute shoppers. But based on anecdotal evidence, the ritual of shopping later is becoming more prominent as consumers — under increasing time pressure and armed with the Internet, gift cards and other buying options — want to take more control of the shopping experience.
Exacerbating the problem this year is that Christmas falling on a Tuesday, gave consumers a full weekend to finish.
“What we see in broad terms is that people are less interested in being forced to do something by marketers and retailers and a lot more are interested in managing the shopping and consuming experience themselves,” said J. Walker Smith, president of market research company Yankelovich Inc. “They want to be in charge. It’s not that people don’t want to shop. They just want to shop on their own terms.”
Such changing consumer habits could transform how the nation’s stores operate, for example, expanding shopping hours for the rest of the year, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at International Council of Shopping Centers.
Nevertheless, Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group Inc., said stores are partly at fault for such delayed holiday buying because, with the exception of some popular items such as Australian sheepskin UGG boots or Nintendo’s Wii, there was little reason for shoppers to run out to stores to buy early. Instead, consumers bought in general categories such as flat-panel TVs or GPS systems, with no specific brand in mind, so they could find.
“There’s no passion,” for holiday shopping, Cohen said.
The procrastination phenomenon is increasingly frustrating retailers whose efforts to draw customers aren’t working they way they used to.
Big sales in early November — along with the sales bonanza on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving — took a lot of thunder out of December, according to Candace Corlett, principal at WSL Strategic Retail. Stores including Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart tried to start the season early with expanded hours and early morning specials similar to those offered on Black Friday, the traditional kickoff of holiday shopping.
Now stores are trying to do the same with the season’s finale, offering marathon hours and other come-ons.
“It’s maddening from a retail perspective because you are sitting there waiting,” said Ed Schmults, chief executive of FAO Schwarz. The iconic toy retailer, which operates stores in Manhattan and Las Vegas, will be open on Christmas for the first time and added a last minute 25 percent reduction and free standard shipping on orders on fao.com until Tuesday to spark sales.
“People are busier than ever. They’re working longer hours,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder of ebags.com, who’s seeing business surge later.
Improvements in Web sites’ ordering and shipping have pushed back online shopping, because late shoppers felt more confident that their gifts would arrive by Christmas Eve. And shoppers who ordered late are not being punished for doing so, unless, of course, they wanted something in limited supply.
According to shop.org, the online arm of National Retail Federation, 68 percent of online retailers polled said they are offering some sort of promotion on upgraded shipping a week before Christmas, dramatically up from 49 percent a year ago. In the past, shoppers would have had to pay a hefty premium shipping fee.
Then there’s the surging popularity of gift cards, which are encouraging shoppers to delay their buying. Americans will spend $26.3 billion on them this holiday season, a 42 percent increase from $18.5 billion in 2005, according to National Retail Federation.
Donovan, the shopper from San Francisco, said she plans to buy gift cards as a last resort if she can’t find anything else.
For some shoppers such as Gail Christenson, the holidays mean doing some shopping — including some for her small children — after Dec. 25, when prices get slashed further.
“Kids get too much at Christmas time,” said Christenson, of Albert Lea, Minn. “It’s better to shop after Christmas.”
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