What are some current events in your industry?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203388804576614653132866200.htmlThis article from the Wall Street Journal is all about sales increases during the month of September, mainly due to discount prices and back-top-school shopping sales. Companies like Target, Costco, Macy's, Nordstrom, Saks, and Kohls all saw sales percentage increases that were higher than what analysts expected. While this was a positive note, the vacancy rate in malls is increasing. Retailers have recently been scared out of opening new stores in such an uncertain economy. Also, retailers are not looking forward as much to the holiday season this year. They are concerned about stress on consumers and weaker traffic blunting sales growth. FedEx Corp., who usually sees a lot of holiday traffic, expects slower growth this year. They expect holiday shipments to climb anywhere from 2.5%-3% as opposed to the 4.3% growth in 2010. The holiday season is not expected to benefit retailers as well as it did in previous years, and this is an prevalent concern in the retail industry.
The increase in growth for retailers in September was no surprise. The back to school savings lure consumers in, as everyone is looking for a good deal. Retailers know that products like clothing and school supplies will be necessary to start a new school year and they take advantage of September as a month to offer discounts but still boost sales and growth. On the other hand, the concern looking ahead to the holiday season was no surprise either. The current economy has consumers purchasing more and more inferior goods and less normal goods. Because of this, gift giving won't be as much of a priority and the holiday season will suffer more so than in previous years. While growth is still expected, it will not be nearly as high. These events are currently affecting the retail industry, and will continue to affect the industry throughout the coming months.
Jenna, I really liked how you used the terms we have been discussing in class and in macroeconomics for this blog post. I was also looking for information about growth in overall retail sales and I found that mainly the discount companies are leading the retail industry. These "dollar companies" are having substantial growth in sales. Dollar General, for example, had an increase of 5% in sales this year.
ReplyDelete"The current economy has consumers purchasing more and more inferior goods and less normal goods" - really liked this sentence