The Annual Game of Chicken Is Afoot

Pfreemanevans | December 01, 2006, 04:27 PM

As we hit the first of December today, we see the dust settling from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday frenzy and the game of chicken between retailers and holiday shoppers beginning. Each year, retailers plan for a series of promotions and markdowns to generate excitement and traffic throughout the holiday season. However, the best-laid plans are not always enough to generate the top line sales retailers hope for. So, they watch the daily sell through and traffic numbers to gauge where they are against plan and goal. If they see that sales are sluggish, they will beef up their promotional plan. But, they will wait until the last possible minute to do so in the hope that any given day in December can turn around the seasonal trend…and because each day is so important at this time of year, one great day can make a big difference. In the mean time, shoppers are in and out of stores and websites (in fact I overheard a woman in the elevator tell a friend that she was exhausted from lots of late nights this week spent online shopping for gifts). But sales figures show that the heaviest days sales occur later and later each the year. As customers dawdle, retailers sweat. As customers procrastinate, retailers begin to sell out of key items buyers become desperate to get. So, we wait to see who blinks first. But, do consumers really hold out for the last minute sales? Not really, or at least not consciously. According to our holiday consumer surveys, only 4 percent of online holiday buyers said they waited for the big day-after-thanksgiving and end-of-season sales to do their shopping online and get the best deals. Customers generally are just not as efficient as we would all hope to be and thus they end up doing the bulk of their buying last minute continuing to up the ante to retailers in their game of chicken.