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There’s just 47 shopping days until Christmas, and according to new data from Attest, a great deal of Americans have already started buying gifts. The research platform’s latest survey of 2,000 nationally representative consumers found that 82% of people plan on starting their shopping before December—a 60% increase from the planned early shoppers in 2022. Only 5% of people say they’re going to be waiting until the last minute (the second week of December or later).
Consumers told Attest that while they’re starting earlier, the largest portion—about a fifth—is likely to spend about the same as they did last year—an average of $200 to $250 on holiday gifts. However, 25.8% plans to spend $600 or more. And 55% of consumers say they will be shopping both in stores and online this year.
Companies and brands are working to adapt to customers’ changing habits. Kohl’s has added mini boutiques to try to attract younger shoppers to their doors. These feature perpetual tween accessory favorite Claire’s, as well as Nine West Collection’s head-to-toe fashions, which will be displayed in a place in stores called “The Outfit Bar.” Craft supply giant Michaels launched an online marketplace, MakerPlace by Michaels, where handmade goods, classes and crafting supplies will be sold, seemingly to compete head-to-head with Etsy. And luxury brand Brunello Cucinelli is continuing its strong in-store partnership with Neiman Marcus, which attracts loyal luxury customers—in the most recent quarter, Neiman Marcus reported the merchandise value of its top customers was 20% higher than in 2019, and the department store company has a 90% customer retention rate.
More than half of shoppers—54.2%—told Attest that they will be buying holiday gifts for children, with significant others (49.8%) and parents (48.3%) also high on shopping lists. And while a huge portion of holiday shopping money is going toward children, those who are gifting to kids is down 16% compared to last year. Maybe Santa Claus will pick up the slack?
FROM THE HEADLINES
Amazon can easily slip paid advertisements into its search results, and a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission states that the company boosted the number of sponsored results shoppers encountered. In 2017, the mega-retailer doubled the percentage of instances that would pull up advertisements for desktop users, and quintupled them for mobile users, the complaint says. Execs reportedly said Amazon would be “crazy not to” increase the number of ads, since they were so profitable. And then, between June 2019 and early 2022, the FTC says Amazon execs “systematically and intentionally deleted” communications to impede a federal investigation.
The FTC has been investigating Amazon’s e-commerce practices since 2019. The watchdog agency and 17 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in September accusing Amazon of being a “monopolist” that uses a “set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies” in an effort to “illegally maintain its monopoly power” on online retail. Amazon is accused of using its size, heft and a specially targeted algorithm to reset its prices to force competitors to change prices, as well as forcing retailers using the platform to use its in-house order fulfillment service, which makes it more expensive to sell products on Amazon.
Amazon has maintained it did nothing wrong throughout the probe, and a spokesperson told Forbes the FTC’s claims about executives deleting messages are “baseless and irresponsible.” However, the company is a literal behemoth, with a 37.6% market share of all U.S. e-commerce, according to Statista. Independent sellers are responsible for 60% of the sales on Amazon, and sold more than 4.1 billion items worldwide in 2022, according to the company. It’s not likely to be ceding any of this online dominance soon.
The one place the company hasn’t seen much success is its brick-and-mortar stores. The latest physical stores to be shut down are a pair of clothing stores, which will close this week. Last year, Amazon closed all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops in the U.S. and UK. Still open are its grocery stores—just-walk-out Amazon Go locations and Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market stores, though eight Amazon Go stores also closed in 2022.
NOW TRENDING
Nostalgia is big, and there are many places where companies are working to cash in on it. Amazon’s new holiday ad campaign, called Joy Is Shared, is a prime example. It features a 60-second film featuring three elderly lifelong friends reliving the sledding runs of their youth with equipment bought from the online retailer. And it’s set to a piano version of the Beatles classic song “In My Life.”
But there are some ventures that aren’t making such overt attempts at nostalgia. Dr. Phil McGraw, the relationship and life strategy expert who became famous on Oprah Winfrey’s couch in the 1990s, is launching his own cable network. Called Merit Street Media, the network will be anchored by a primetime version of his former daytime talk show, called Dr. Phil Primetime. More programming will be launched in coming months.
And Bill Rouhana, chairman and CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, says DVDs aren’t dead yet. His company owns Redbox, which still has 29,000 colorful DVD rental kiosks at locations across the U.S. The DVD rental service has about 10 million active users in its customer loyalty program. For all the hype of streaming services, Rouhana said there are many customers who cannot afford them, as well as customers without reliable broadband access. However, there are still DVD players in living rooms—and new to buy in stores—nationwide.
RIGHTS + SPONSORSHIP
Last week, the Texas Rangers won the club’s first ever World Series. And while the victory brought excitement to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and delighted fans of underdogs everywhere, not a lot of TV viewers tuned in to Fox’s broadcasts. According to Nielsen figures, the games between the Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks were the least-viewed World Series in 30 years—even less than the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic impacted series. This may be because of a lack of starpower and national interest in both teams, but the low viewership could impact future broadcast rights negotiations. In 2025, ESPN can opt out of its current broadcast rights deal with Major League Baseball.
In order to sweeten the pot for the NBA’s broadcast and streaming rights agreement, which comes to an end with the 2024-25, the league added a new In Season Tournament this year. It began last week, and pits all 30 teams against each other within their conferences based on their win-loss records last season. The championship takes place Dec. 9. It’s similar to tournaments already taking place in soccer and college basketball leagues, said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and could create more excitement in the beginning of the sport’s season.
There are no big-time negotiations for broadcast of women’s sports just yet, but they could be on the horizon. A new report by Wasserman found women’s sports made up 15% of sports media coverage in 2022, tripling assessments from 2019. A lot of this increase has to do with expansion of all coverage through streaming, the report found, but enthusiasm for women’s sports is growing. Not surprisingly, the top three women’s sports in terms of hours of TV coverage were basketball (2,055 hours), soccer (1,835 hours) and tennis (1,810 hours).
“Persistent, incorrect assumptions of lower media representation for women’s sports have created hesitancy around investment, whereas truth will spark opportunity,” Wasserman executive vice president for global insights Shelley Pisarra said in a statement. “Coverage of sports has definitely evolved across platforms, requiring new approaches to and support for women’s sports advancement.”
LEGAL MATTERS
Slogans, phrases and jingles can be trademarked, but what if those what if those words criticize a public official? The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week on Vidal v. Elster, a case about Steve Elster’s attempt to trademark the phrase “Trump Too Small” to use on a T-shirt. The origin of the phrase comes from a comment Sen. Marco Rubio made in a 2016 debate referencing the size of the former president’s hands—something he’s been touchy about for years. Elster’s trademark application was initially denied under the Lanham Act, which requires living individuals to consent to all trademarks directly identifying them. There won’t be a ruling for several months, but justices appeared skeptical of Elster’s trademark claims during oral arguments.
Paid business ChatGPT users who are sued over copyright claims in the future can rest assured of one thing: They’ll have a lawyer. Parent company OpenAI announced this week that they’ll pay legal fees through their new Copyright Shield program. ChatGPT and other generative AI applications are “trained” on data that programmers give them, meaning that ChatGPT “learns” how to write and speak by consuming written products. This sometimes includes books and other copyrighted works, though OpenAI has said that this use is protected under the “fair use” exemption in copyright law.
DEEP DIVE
Despite Skepticism Over The Rise In Retail Theft, Stores Are Adopting Police Technology
Retailers reported $112 billion in losses last year from “shrink”—lost or damaged merchandise and theft. The problem is escalating, up from $94 billion in 2021. So stores are adding new defenses, including body cameras. Forbes’ Lauren Debter looked at the rising use of the technology. Dozens of retailers, including 25 of the 100 biggest, began exploring or using the law-enforcement technology in their stores in roughly the last 18 months, the largest body-cam manufacturers told Forbes.
While body cameras are starting to make some appearances—the Mall of America in the greater Minneapolis area has outfitted its entire security force with them—they can cover blind spots left by fixed closed-circuit surveillance cameras. But they can also provide another side of incidents requiring security intervention. Bystanders tend to use smartphones to film any sort of security action, and a camera can help the store defend itself.
However, there are questions of whether there’s a need for another layer of technology to protect stores from shoplifters. Retail analysts at William Blair said in a report last month that theft is on the rise, but it appears some retailers may have exaggerated the problem to mask tightening margins and management mistakes.
“Ultimately, we believe recent actions to stoke government response, incremental mitigation efforts by companies, and some early signs of stability in shrink metrics all point to a more manageable issue looking into 2024,” the report said.
FACTS + COMMENTS
Elon Musk’s X has started selling off Twitter handles that haven’t been used by the people or entities that initially registered them.
$50,000: The flat fee the service has offered for some of the now-available handles
1.5 billion: Number of handles that Musk has said he would be freeing up “soon”
‘Bots and trolls’: Musk said this group was sitting on a “vast number” of handles back in November 2022
VIDEO
How Halfdays Is Fighting The ‘Shrink It And Pink It’ Method At Their Women’s Athletics Brand
QUIZ
It’s been a huge year for celebrity memoirs, with a long-anticipated book from Barbra Streisand hitting shelves this week. Which one of these famous author’s memoirs hasn’t sold at least 50,000 print copies through October?
A. Patrick Stewart
B. Britney Spears
C. Prince Harry
D. Pamela Anderson
See if you got it right here.
Read the full article here
