Last Christmas there was no doubt the Scrooge in shoppers took a bite out of merchant merriness. But what will Christmas 2009 be like? A new survey says that shoppers might be willing to loosen the purse strings.
“We are seeing for this holiday season a ray of conservative optimism,” said IRI Consulting & Innovation President Thom Blischok. “Last year was simply a complete retrenchment, holding back (and) being very, very restrictive on what they spent.”
For retailers, the 2008 holiday season was the toughest in nearly four decades, as consumers faced a financial market crisis and housing downturn.
But as shoppers move toward this year’s holidays, employment fears remain top of mind, with 78 percent of respondents expressing worry over job stability, just 1 percent less than a year earlier, the survey found.
And consumers are using lessons in thrift to allot holiday gift budgets.
Just over 52 percent of consumers said they would spend up to $499 on holiday gifts, about 9.2 percent more people than last year.
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