By: Leo J. Shapiro and Steve Yahn Good Christmas-season sales tidings for retailers and their newspaper partners came sledding in as part of our Leo J. Shapiro and Associates national consumer poll for November.
A strong surge following October's gloomy prospect of a "Heartbreaking Holiday Season" was fueled by news of an improving economy. Unless something untoward happens in the coming weeks, retailers will experience a relatively healthy demand for Christmas goods -- and, as ever, they inevitably will turn to newspaper advertising to drive sales.
Our national poll revealed that the percentage of consumers planning to spend more for Christmas as of November rose six points from the previous month to 22 %, and two points higher than in November 2004. Not only was this a significant increase in itself, but also it came on the heels of the October poll results, which showed the lowest level of consumers planning to spend more for Christmas than in any previous October in more than 30 years of our polling efforts.
In another significant finding of the November poll, 36% of consumers said they are planning to do their buying earlier this year than last -- up three points from November 2004.
The bottom line: The improved outlook for Christmas spending is part and parcel of a general surge in consumer willingness to spend and improved job security. The results show a willingness of consumers to spend freely increasing month-to-month not only for Christmas gifts but also for a wide range of consumables and durable goods.
--NEWSPAPER "INSERTS" FOR CHRISTMAS
'Tis the season to comb newspaper advertising for help in planning holiday shopping. One in three (33%) respondents in our national poll in November rate newspaper inserts as "very helpful" in planning for Christmas shopping.
Asked about newspapers alone -- with no mention of the inserts they carry -- 24% of the respondents rate newspapers as "very helpful," followed by magazines (19%); television (14%), and the Internet (12%).
While inserts are largely carried into the home by newspapers, they are also starting to be delivered via the Internet. Fourteen percent of consumers report going to a retail store Web site on a weekly basis to look at their weekly newspaper ads or inserts.
Media giants The Tribune, Knight Ridder, and Gannett have all said they will post the inserts their newspapers carry on the Web sites of their newspapers. Not a bad idea, since 17% of consumers in our November poll say they would find seeing all the newspaper inserts on their newspaper's web site as "very helpful" for planning shopping.
In this environment, methodologies for measuring the reach of advertising increasingly must go beyond audits of paid circulation to take extra account of online readership.
The future of "inserts" as vehicles for carrying advertising exclusively for one retailer or one brand looks bright, and the Internet's ability to deliver this new form of insert directly into the home in an interactive format is growing. To compete with Google, Yahoo, and other content providers for audiences and advertising dollars going to this form of advertising, newspapers will increasingly need to make the Internet an integral part of their distribution system.
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As Christmas approaches, SAGE advice will track the outlook for holiday-season consumer spending at www.sagegrowth.com, which researches and analyzes a variety of business-related consumer behavior and media trends.
About the authors: Leo J. Shapiro is founder of SAGE - Survival and Growth Enterprises - as well as Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, a leading consumer-behavior market research firm (leos@ljs.com). Steve Yahn is affiliated with SAGE and has his own communications consultancy (syahn@optonline.net). Erik Shapiro, Senior Research Analyst at Leo J. Shapiro and Associates (eriks@ljs.com), and Lisy Wang, President of Mai Kai Te marketing consultancy (info@maikt.com), also contributed to this column.
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