All Articles Tagged "consumer behavior"
Theory Tying Spenders to Gender Doesn’t Hold Up
(Wall Street Journal) — A longstanding marketing adage makes clear who holds most American households’ purse strings: Women control 80% or more of spending. For at least two decades, this number has been a fixture of news articles, marketing websites and books about consumer behavior. And as with many oft-repeated statistics, no one is sure where it originated. ”It’s very hard to get to the bottom of the numbers,” says Maddy Dychtwald, co-author of “Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better,” published last year with the claim that “women are responsible for 83 percent of consumer purchases in the United States.” Ms. Dychtwald adds, “This is muddy terrain.” In addition to having murky origins, the number appear to be wrong. Several recent surveys suggest that men have nearly equal say on spending, and that when men and women live together, both participate in spending decisions.
Retailers Sign Celebrity Lines to Attract Customers
(New York Times) — To find Miley Cyrus’s line of clothes, shoppers head to Wal-Mart. For Selena Gomez’s, they go to Kmart. Jennifer Lopez’s line is at Kohl’s, and Demi Lovato’s at Target. Rachel Bilson dinnerware can only be found at Macy’s, while for the Kardashian Kollection, fans must go to Sears. Department store shopping is getting more and more complicated, driven by the growing popularity of exclusive lines, often backed by celebrities.
In an effort to stave off rounds of price-slashing with competitors over the same brands, stores are increasingly relying on merchandise that can be found nowhere else. Retailers can mark these exclusive lines down at their own pace, with a far more profitable outcome than with a national brand. Though such lines have existed for years, the recession made them more prevalent as the designers became willing to cut exclusive deals rather than risk being cut from store floors altogether.
“One of the biggest challenges within, especially the department store realm, but probably throughout most of retail, is the lack of differentiation, the me-too-ness and the sameness that has plagued retailing for years,” said Robert Drbul, an analyst with Barclays Capital. “This push on exclusive brands has really helped separate many retailers from their competition.” Yet while exclusive lines can attract a shopper, they can also be dizzyingly hard to keep track of — was it Selena at Sears and Miley at Macy’s?
Retailers Look to E-Tailers for Survival Tips
(Daily Finance) — Retailers need to “debore” the consumer, says Dan Hurwitz, president of shopping mall landlord Developers Diversified Realty. He notes that his company did focus groups and found shoppers just weren’t excited by store experiences anymore. By next year, half the purchases made in the U.S. will be either done online or influenced by online shopping, according to a study by KPMG. So, with shoppers so used to shopping and buying online, many vendors are rolling out hardware and software that will put the Internet on the shelf, take over your mobile phone and get you out of the store without standing on a checkout line.
