DALLAS, Dec 16, 2009 / FW/ — With 9 days before Christmas, every other commercial on TV is encouraging consumers to shop for gifts. And, the people have spoken, they love the ads but less than half of them are done with their shopping according to two different surveys by BIGresearch.
The economists might be saying that the worst of the recession is over but consumers are still on the shy side of spending. The proof, this year’s favorite holiday commercial is Walmart, which touts savings from beginning to end.
The rest of the top 10: Walmart (#1), Target (#2), Best Buy (#3), Gap (#4), Macy’s (#5), Old Navy (#6), Kmart (#7), Sears (#8), Hallmark (#9) and Kohl’s (#10)
Favorites or not, according to the same survey, only 16.8% said that their favorite holiday commercial motivated them to shop with that retailer while nearly 1/3 (32.8%) said that there was no impact as they regularly shop there anyway.
Those figures alone might just be a cause for concern, but from a different survey also conducted by BIGresearch, this time for the NRF, the average person had completed 46.7 percent of their holiday shopping by the second week of December.
Of course, there is still time to make up for this low number, and there is still hope because according to the survey, nearly 42 million people (19.1%) had not even started their shopping as of late last week, while 8.6 percent of shoppers have completely finished.
Adults over 65 years old have completed the most shopping (50.0%) while adults 45-54 year olds have completed the least (44.1%).
With many people shopping for bargains, discount stores (42.0%) and department stores (42.0%) can expect to see the most traffic in the coming days. Grocery stores can also expect to see an increase in last-minute shopping this year (11.5% vs. 8.4% in 2008) as more people consider food or candy as a gift item or head to supermarkets to purchase ingredients for homemade meals.
Electronic stores (22.0%), clothing or accessories stores (20.6%), outlet stores (13.6%) and drug stores (7.8%) will also see their share of holiday shoppers before the big day, though a big chunk of procrastinators will also shop online (38.0%).
With an array of gift options, the majority of people (44.7%) say they have purchased apparel so far this year. Additionally, shoppers have been buying books, CDs, DVDs, videos and video games (39.7%), toys (34.6%) gift cards (27.5%), consumer electronics (21.8%) and food (19.3%).