Retailers scramble to adapt to new realities

Although it’s still early days of the holiday shopping season, some analysts are already worried that too many merchants are taking a business-as-usual approach to an era that is anything but Men's ED Hardy Long Shirts usual. Any miscalculation could be disastrous for retailers, who typically expect up to 20 percent of annual sales and a bigger share of annual profits during the critical holiday season. “Retailers still don’t have a full grasp of reality,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a consulting firm. Retailers have good reason to fear such financial jitters, having only last year endured a disastrous season in which holiday retail sales fell 3.4 percent as Americans, rattled by the financial crisis, held onto their pocketbooks. This year, Flickinger said, consumers are facing the reality of a sky-high ED Sexy Female Suit unemployment rate and growing concerns about credit card debt. “Shoppers are more scared going into this holiday season than any time in the last 50 years,” he said. In the new era of tight budgets, consumers are looking for good value on the items they want and need. But instead, many analysts say retailers seem to be taking a different approach: offering ever-more extreme discounts on items they want to get rid of. The super-low price method of offloading excess inventory has become so commonplace, even among higher-end retailers, that shoppers are coming to the conclusion that many products are just worth less, said brand analyst Robert Passikoff. “It isn’t ED Female Leggings just that you learned that there will be sales — there will always be sales — but what it’s done is it ultimately affects the value perception of the product,” said Passikoff, president of the customer loyalty research firm Brand Keys. Even while Americans are still munching on candy and taking down the Halloween decorations, retailers already are girding for what is expected to be an intense battle for fewer customer dollars. Big-box leaders Wal-Mart and Target have announced plans to drop prices on a wide range of items, from toys to food. Along with online retailer Amazon.com, they have launched an intense price war over the season’s most anticipated books. Sears is hoping to get ahead of the game by pushing “Black Friday” specials ED Hardy caps long before Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that typically marks the start of the holiday shopping season, when retailers traditionally go into the black for the year. Many retailers are aiming to lure shoppers with marketing messages appealing to sentiment but focused on value. Home products retailer Crate & Barrel, for example, is touting “holiday moments at prices to celebrate.” Analysts say customers in this post-bubble era are looking for value, but that means more than just a great sale price or alluring marketing message. Today many consumers are thinking carefully about whether they need the product on offer, even if the price seems too good to pass up.