The New Consumer:

It’s not surprising that in a time of recovery from the worst financial crisis in half a century people are changing their spending habits. Business that cater to more luxury items and services are seeing people turn away from them and instead choosing more piratical things to spend their money on and that trend isn’t expected to change anytime soon. Even with the return of jobs.

“We seem to be at a cultural inflection point that we haven’t seen since World War II,” said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of market researcher the Harrison Group.”People are getting used to being careful, and I don’t know how you undo that,”

Some luxury companies are looking to September 11th as an indicator of the spending climate. Hoping that once the economy turns that the consumer will follow and so will their money. However others still doubt that this will happen. Even though there is hope for the economy many people are still worrying about job loss yet to come.

According to the Commerce Department more people are starting to save than before the crisis.  The consumer is starting to shop for more products for more social, political, or environmental reasons. Even those who haven’t been impacted by the down turn are cubing their spending and not looking to flash their wealth.

What does this mean for many companies? They need to become conscious of what their customer wants. That could mean looking for products to become more green, even reducing the size of the logo and giving more bang for the buck. It’s time to reposition brands

A Sign of Some Recovery?

With the unemployment rate at around 10% it is hard to believe that work is out there. However the

Labor Department is reporting that the retail sector by 321,700 jobs in November despite the weakest sales in 35 years according to some reports. That is a 37% increase over last year.

“Holiday hiring is definitely stronger than a year ago, but it remains clear that retailers are still reluctant to hire,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Even if we see total holiday retail gains of 400,000 to 450,000 this year, it would be well short of the 714,000 seasonal jobs added on average between 1999 and 2007. Even in 2001, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the retail sector added more than 585,000 extra workers in the final three months of the year.”

Still any improvement in hiring is better that nothing.

Future of Retail

The news is looking good going into 2010. Retail Forward is reporting the same-store sales for December (excluding Wal-Mart) increased 3.0%. This number comes from a sales-weighted composite of 32 retailers. Department stores stores sales did lag, but they did have higher sales over last year while apparel and accessory stores did better than average.

Who is the big winner in all of this? Well, Amazon.com. They did cut into some of the sales from stores. Numbers show that more than half of all households shopped at Amazon.com during the holidays.

“The trend through the holidays is now pretty clear that shoppers are moving toward stronger spending into 2010. But it’s also clear that some cautiousness will persist and that s pending will remain uneven across categories and retailers,” said senior economist at Retail Forward, Frank Badillo

Maybe it’s time for more retailers to pull out their business models and take a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook.

A Sign of Some Recovery?

With the unemployment rate at around 10% it is hard to believe that work is out there. However the

Labor Department is reporting that the retail sector by 321,700 jobs in November despite the weakest sales in 35 years according to some reports. That is a 37% increase over last year.

“Holiday hiring is definitely stronger than a year ago, but it remains clear that retailers are still reluctant to hire,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Even if we see total holiday retail gains of 400,000 to 450,000 this year, it would be well short of the 714,000 seasonal jobs added on average between 1999 and 2007. Even in 2001, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the retail sector added more than 585,000 extra workers in the final three months of the year.”

Still any improvement in hiring is better that nothing.