Find the best credit card offers online.Holiday shopping trends are showing an impressive amount of restraint among American consumers. In particular, consumers are moving away from spending on credit and prefer using cash or debit cards instead – that is, if they spend for the holidays at all.
According to a new National Retail Federation survey, less than a third of holiday shoppers included in the survey see their credit cards as their preferred method of payment for their holiday shopping. Out of ten shoppers surveyed, almost four or 39.3 percent say that they use their debit cards or check cards most instead of credit cards. This year, the number of people who prefer to use their credit cards for shopping payment has dropped to 30.9 percent. Last year, 2008, it was 33.8 percent. Consumers who used cash for holiday shopping numbered more than a quarter of the surveyed shoppers. Only 3.8 percent of those surveyed used checks.
Phil Rist, the executive vice president of Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch says that the survey shows the expected restraint among American consumers who are focusing on using money that they have for shopping and not money that they hope to have. BIGresearch is the company that did the survey for the National Retail Federation. Rist says that, by relying less on credit for their holiday purchases, consumers will feel more secure with their personal finances soon. This will then lead to an increase in spending from them in the future.
Aside from moving away from credit cards, the survey also showed that, by the second week of December, 46.7 percent of the surveyed shoppers had finished their holiday shopping. During the same time last year, 47.1 percent of those surveyed had finished their shopping. This year’s percentage is the lowest that the survey as seen since 2004. During that year, only 46.3 percent had completed their holiday shopping for the same period of time.
As the holidays get nearer to ending, retailers are going to be more aggressive at catching shoppers. Tracy Mullin, president and CEO of National Retail Federation says that retailers are aware of how much hangs on the final lap of the shopping season. Most of them plan on emphasizing their product promotions and their discount offers as the shopping season comes nearer to closing so that they can bring in more last-minute shoppers.
The forecasts from NRF predicts that sales during this year’s holiday season is going to drop by 1 percent compared to last year’s sales figures. Details from the retail industry regarding November sales already showed a drop of 0.8 percent in year over year sales.
