Well, most of the numbers are in for the Christmas 2013 shopping season. For most, the numbers are disappointing, and for Target…no comment. But online stores don’t seem to have that problem.
Last week, Best Buy was the latest to report declining numbers. According to Shopper Trak, the number of retail traffic in stores has declined for the third year in a row. Some stores opened on Thanksgiving day, but that did little to help. After the Thanksgiving weekend, sales either held? slightly below average or declined drastically. Shopper Trak shows Americans visited five malls in 2007, in ’13, only three. Meanwhile on the online front, sales increases have more than doubled from just a few years earlier. Even Best Buy says their online shopping sales have increased 24% since last year.
It was thought after the Great Recession of the late 200os, people would return to the malls and stores. But many never did. Instead, people are returning to online stores. And the economy isn’t really fully recovered (I wonder if it ever will), but that’s just part of the problem. One woman testified that with three kids, it’s just too chaotic to go. It’s a lot easier to look for that last toy online for your kids than to be fighting over it at the store. Season after season, there are news stories of people getting trampled, fights breaking out, even people getting killed because of insane store shopping. Hmmm…is that one of the reasons store fronts is losing and online fronts are winning?