Amazon’s plan to buy Whole Foods foreshadows a period where e-commerce will begin to transform shopping for consumables—exposing them to an impact that is now rapidly advancing in discretionary goods categories from apparel to electronics. The e-commerce impact on the grocery,…
Brick and mortar retail gains for the November-December holiday were about 2.4%–given topline sales gains that were revised down a bit to 3.9% and online gains that came in at an estimated 14.9%. The results were slightly higher than expected. The…
The 4% gain in holiday sales for November-December was stronger than expected and stronger than a year ago—by about half a percentage point on both counts. The better results occurred partly at brick and mortar stores—not just online. The in-store results,…
The winners and losers among categories this holiday will include gift cards, clothing, home-related goods, and media from books to video games. That’s the takeaway from an October survey of holiday shoppers—and comparisons with responses spanning more than 10 years. Given…
Spending will be slightly weaker online and in stores this holiday season. Sales will grow 2% in stores and 14.5% online—resulting in 3.5% overall growth, according to projections by MacroSavvy™. The forecast shows that the weakness will be most evident at…
In the summer of 2007, I used insights from two particular economic measures to warn of the recession risk that later became a reality by early 2008. Given the anxiety raised by the “Brexit” vote, it’s a good time to see…
Today we call it confidence or sentiment. It has also been famously described as “animal spirits” and more recently tied to matters of “trust” and “fairness” in the economy.¹·² Whatever you call it, there are psychological or behavioral factors that affect…