Retailers put on final-hour blitzes
By Anne D'innocenzio
Associated Press
NEW YORK — With round-the-clock hours, advertising blitzes, extra catalogs, discounts and more discounts, merchants are trying to draw last-minute shoppers and give a final boost to sales totals in a trying holiday season.
Bloomberg News Service
Starting Thursday at 6 a.m., Kmart Corp. stores began keeping their doors open for 110 straight hours, compared with last year's 66-hour marathon.
Lindsay Penaz looked over the Christmas ornaments for sale at Bloomingdale's in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., yesterday. Many stores were offering big discounts to entice last-minute shoppers.
Blockbuster Inc. has increased its TV advertising by 20 percent for the final days before Christmas, while Chicago-based General Growth Properties, which operates 140 malls around the country — including Ala Moana Center — stepped up advertising.
Bloomingdale's, hoping to snag procrastinators, sent an extra catalog, highlighting discounted sweaters and perfumes, to more than one million homes in the season's final stretch.
This season had five full weekends and was 32 days long, one day more than last year. But many shoppers seem to be staying out of the stores because of the recession or the shock waves from the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.
Retail analysts expect the weakest season in more than a decade, and don't share merchants' hopes that a significant final buying spree can change that.
"My sense is that people have been buying all along according to their needs, even with the bargains out there," said Philip H. Kowalczyk, vice president of Kurt Salmon Associates, a retail consulting firm. "There will be a rush, but it will be different. Sales will be depressed because of all the discounts and the conservative spending."
The share of holiday sales generated in the last six days before Christmas has been increasing in the last decade. But C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group of Charleston, S.C., believes that won't happen this year.
He expects the share will drop to about 25 percent, from last year's 30.9 percent, which was a record and a big jump from 23.9 percent in 1999, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.
"I think the season peaked," said Beemer. "Right now, consumers are not interested in buying gifts, but being with their families."
Malachy Kavanagh, a spokesman at the International Council of Shopping Centers, disagrees and is predicting a share of 35 percent, in part because the final 6-day period includes a full weekend.
Retailers prefer, and share, his bullishness.
Michael Glazer, president and chief executive officer of K-B Toys, is hoping that a newspaper advertising insert, dropped to 60 million customers earlier in the week, will help the store generate 40 percent of its holiday business in the last six days. That's up from 33 percent a year ago.
"We used to cut off promotions, and rely on heavy traffic at the malls," Glazer said, adding that it started advertising later in the season last year.
"What I am hoping for is that we become a destination place."
Kmart suffered a worse-than-expected decline in sales in November, and is hoping to recoup during the last ten days before Christmas. That period traditionally has accounted for 45 percent of holiday sales, according to Jack Ferry, a company spokesman.
Internet retailers are benefiting from an increase in last-minute buying compared with a year ago, according to Juliane Hearst, vice president of research at Bizrate.com, a Web site and research firm that tracks and compares 2,000 online sites.
The online holiday season peaked Dec. 17, a day earlier than last year, but revenues, which topped at $254 million, have not been dropping as fast as a year ago, Hearst said.
In fact, this week, online sales gained an extra 2 percentage points, resulting in a 32 percent gain in sales from Nov. 19 through Dec. 19, compared with a year ago.
Hearst believes that shoppers are staying online because of the plentiful offers of free shipping — with minimum purchase requirements — and price discounts.
But brick-and-mortar retailers, many of which are meeting their sales expectations on the Web, are finding themselves struggling on land.
There have been a few bright spots in consumer electronics, particularly game consoles and DVD players, kitchenware and certain toys like Harry Potter games. Customers have bypassed luxury items, like jewelry, as well as winter apparel in a warmer-than-usual season.
John Morris, an apparel retail analyst at Gerard Klauer Mattison, said this weekend could be hurt by all the promotions offered earlier in the season.
Customers now may find it harder to locate products they want as merchants, with pared down holiday inventories, canceled re-orders following Sept. 11.
"Those that waited, expecting a fire sale, may be disappointed," he said.
