Each year, retailers and manufacturers look forward to the Consumer Electronics Association’s annual CE Holiday Purchase Pattern Study as a guide to help plan Q4 sales. We ran parts of the report on Dealerscope.com the day it was released at the CEA Industry Forum in October.
Although retailers are well into their holiday sales season by now, we thought an overview of the report was worth printing in this issue for retailers to use as a guide to see how their Q4 sales are comparing to what consumers say they want, to adjust their merchandising or last-minute marketing efforts to reflect consumer trends, and as a future reference to see how they measured up and what they might change to improve sales and profitability during the coming months.
Inside this package, you’ll also find portraits of this year’s CE Hall of Fame inductees and a special report on stealing the spotlight from your competitors. In the following section, we report on some of the products, technologies and trends that will be highlighted at the International 2009 CES and will impact retailers through the next year.
But first, the Q4 overview.
Despite the tumultuous economy, CE sales were expected to remain relatively healthy compared to other industries, with a 3.5 percent increase during the fourth quarter, roughly half of last year’s growth.
“It will be bad across the board, except for CE products,” Shawn DuBravac, a CEA economist, said during a presentation of the study at the recent CEA Industry Forum in Las Vegas.
The National Retail Federation (NRF), for example, estimated that Q4 sales throughout the general retail industry will grow only 1.9 percent, one of the lowest increases recorded since the NRF survey began in 2002. CE retail sales will fare slightly better, with such segments as A/V growing at 3.9 percent, accessories at 4.6 percent and video games at 5.6 percent.
The holiday forecast was conducted with 1,000 U.S. adults and fielded from Sept. 25 to Sept. 28. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
In the survey, CEA found that consumers’ total spending around this holiday season is expected to drop 14 percent to $1,437 from $1,671. Spending on gifts is expected to drop 15 percent to $750 from $804 last year. But the amount of gift expenditure allotted to CE products is expected to rise to 28 percent or $210 from 22 percent or $194 last year.
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