The "Trade Down" Holiday Season

On the front page of the New York Times website was a great article about Black Friday and retail during the current economic instability that is being faced by many Americans through out the country. The article was entitled "Retail Desperation on Display in Early Hours" and was written by Michael Barbaro. The article discusses the problem being faced by many stores since shoppers are looking only for the best deals and are willing to shop at cheaper stores than what they are accustomed to. Many of these shoppers have no choice but to shop at cheaper stores due to the uncertain economy and the rising prices of many necessities including gas and mortages. Shoppers begin planning out a course of action for the morning of Black Friday many days in advance, gathering coupons and plotting out exactly what they are getting and where in the store they need to go in order to get those items. Stores are now being forced to give out more coupons and make the sales on popular items even more dramatic than in previous years. Even though the amount of money spent on Black Sunday is supposed to increase from the amount spent in 2006, the rest of the holiday season is going to be a bust and stores will not be attracting as many shoppers as they usually do during the season.

My favorite part of this article is basically making fun of higher end stores such as Saks Fifth Ave and Neiman Marcus. The following is what Barbaro had to say about Black Friday at Saks. "At Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship store in Manhattan on Friday, fur-wearing customers swarmed around their version of door-buster deals: handbags from Marc Jacob's for $1,400 and from Zac Posen for $500." This adds a bit of comedy to the article, but one really cant compare a handbag being on sale for $1,400 to popular items being on sale at Kohl's or Macy's. Stores are going to do everything they can during the upcoming holiday season but it all might be in vain since many shoppers are not going to have the extra money to spend on presents that they might have had in past years.