With barely a few days left before Christmas, shoppers are still holding out till the very last minute to get the best deals possible and are making retailers extremely jittery. Many stores will be keeping their doors open till late right until Christmas. J.C. Penney will have its stores open till midnight on Friday and Saturday, Mervyns will remain open till 2am through the weekend and will also give away $10 gift certificates to its first 200 shoppers everyday, when the store opens at 5am.
Kmart will also be revving things up and is holding a non-stop 64 hour sale starting at 6am on saturday at the majority of its stores across the country. Beating Kmart are the Macy’s stores in Greater New York that will stay open for 83 hours, with its Queens Center Mall store opening at 7am on Thursday and closing at 6pm on Monday, a continuous stretch of 107 hours. Candace Corlett, a principal at WSL Strategic Retail, put it perfectly, saying “There’s a lot of desperation out there. This is a weird, wacky holiday.”
Retailers are not the only ones who are facing the crunch, the International Council of Shopping Centers announced that sales for the previous week were up by only 2.1% over last year’s figures and were the weakest year-on-year figures. There have been a series of unfortunate events getting in the way of shopping, from storms to the economy to procrastinating shoppers waiting for last minute deals.
Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group, shaved his holiday forecast this week, saying sales at stores open a year or more would rise 1.8%, not 2%. It was his lowest forecast in a decade.
Consumer Reports’ final shopping poll of the season found that one-third of respondents hadn’t bought anything as of Dec. 9 and that 34% didn’t expect to finish acquiring gifts until Christmas Eve.
