Holiday 2000 statistics that every retailer should know - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

DSN Retailing Today, Nov 20, 2000 by Tim Craig

In the last two weeks, America's mass media has flooded the airwaves and newsstands with a veritable sea of statistics from the presidential election. Little-known kernels of trivia were thrown at us at a blistering pace--such as the tie between Gore and Bush in Cedar County, Iowa, in which each candidate received exactly 4,025 votes.

With all the distraction of these election statistics, however, the retail community has not been giving due diligence to the statistics that really count--namely, those that stand to have the greatest effect on the race for fourth quarter dollars. So in the tradition of holiday sales prognostications, here is a list of Holiday 2000 "Best of" figures on which every retailer should base its Christmas crunch strategy:

5.6: Anticipated industry sales growth, as a percentage.

8.1: Average rate of customer satisfaction with on-line shopping experiences, based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "extremely satisfied."

21: Percent decrease in the amount that consumers in Western states expect to spend on gifts ($831, down from $1,052).

24: Percent of consumers who wait for sales before buying Christmas gifts.

27: Percent of consumers who said that higher gas prices would likely decrease their holiday spending.

31: Percent of consumers who plan on buying power tools as a gift.

38: Percent of shoppers expecting to peruse catalogs for gift ideas, up from 19% in 1993.

39: Percent of Internet users who say they will send holiday cards via e-mail this year.

44: Percent of retailers that have the same pricing strategy for the Internet that they have for their store.

45: Percent of all consumers who intend to buy a gift for a pet.

51.4: Percent of women who say they believe in Santa Claus, compared to 38.6% of men.

54: Percent of consumers who plan to give 20 gifts or more.

55.5: Percent of consumers who put clothes on their "to buy" list.

79: Percent of females who expect to shop at discount department stores for non-food gifts.

82: Percent of consumers who expect to spend more--or at least the same--than last year.

83: Percent of shoppers who say they will spend at least some of their gift-buying time at the discounters, up from 57% in 1993.

91: Percent of those shoppers who had already made a purchase on the Internet in the past year that plan to buy gifts on line.

$264: Average amount expected to be spent on line by Internet users.

$828: Anticipated overall spending per consumer, down from $840 in 1999.