Economy takes toll on holiday shopping
-
- December
- 17
The miserable economy is giving Americans a case of the Grinches, a new survey from Yonkers-based Consumer Reports has found.
About two-thirds of people polled said the tough economy is changing holiday habits at their households. The changes include setting a spending limit for gifts (37 percent), making homemade gifts (14 percent) and not exchanging gifts at all (6 percent).
As of Dec. 7, only 56 percent of those surveyed had started their holiday shopping. And 29 percent said they don’t expect to wrap it up until Dec. 23 or even later. One in 10 shoppers won’t be done until Christmas Eve, according to Consumer Reports.
Tod Marks, senior project editor at Consumer Reports, said the upside is that consumers will be more likely to find a deal. One in four consumers who have started their shopping think the deals are better this year, compared to 13 percent who say they are worse.
One bright spot for retailers in the survey is that the average number of gifts consumers expect to purchase is the same as last year: 14.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm by Julie Moran Alterio.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
