Some interesting stats on holiday shopping trends from the Newspaper Association of America, keep in mind the audience this is written for are newspaper execs.

How Important is Holiday Shopping to Your Retailers? Very!

This holiday shopping period was shaping up to be a tough period even before the financial crisis hit the economy. The Center for Media Research reported in mid October that this year’s sales would likely be the worst in 17 years (versus 1991 when sales increased by 1.2%). Still holiday shopping is projected to be $42.5 billion.

These dim forecasts are coupled with the fact that the extremely late Thanksgiving means significantly fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No wonder it feels like holiday decorations were going up in July. Seriously, the days when Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was the biggest shopping day of the year are officially over. Some reports suggest that Black Friday has slipped to the 8th biggest shopping day of the year.

A study just released by MediaMark (MRI) reports that 62.3 million adult consumers will begin their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. That is 35.1% of all shoppers are reporting that holiday shopping is now starting before Thanksgiving. 36% of adults will commence shopping between Thanksgiving and December 15th. Another 26% start shopping between the 15th of December and Christmas eve while 2% wait till Christmas Eve to begin holiday shopping. By the way, 1.3% of all consumers don’t start Holiday shopping until after Christmas.

This information is important to your retailers who may not be aware of when sales are now taking place and therefore may be promoting at the wrong time, potentially too late. This is a good time to share the new data from MRI with advertisers.

A few other significant learnings from the MRI 2008 Omnibus study conducted this September:

1. More women shop early: 61% vs. 38% of men
   
2. Households with less income start earlier. 42% of those earning under $59k start early, 35% of those earning $50-100k, while only 22% of those earning over $100k start early.
   
3. 69% of early shoppers give a gift card.
   
4. 33% of adults give a gift wish list to friends and family.
   
5. Halloween is growing as an annual celebration according to NRF’s BIG Research with the average celebrant spending $66.54 on the holiday. 18-24 year olds spend even more, $86.59 on Halloween. Total Halloween spend is now projected at $5.77 billion.

Whether you are on the buying or selling side of the print advertising equation, we all ultimately answer to the same person - the end-user, also know as the consumer. 

People who get wrapped up in sales too often forget that advertising only happens when these end-users want to buy the stuff that is being advertised. No sales means no revenue for the advertiser and no revenue means no advertising, in most cases.

So it is worth noting the apparent difficulty that one of the gods of direct selling - QVC - has run into recently. Last week QVC laid off 700 employees in a cost saving measure. No one, except people who live alone with lots of cats, usually admits to watching QVC but I will (and I own no cats). And in the weeks and months to follow, I suggest you do too.

Here is why: No one is better at selling than QVC. They sell stuff that no one really needs but they do a masterful job of knowing what people want. It will be very instructive to see how they adapt their product offerings and approach to a rapidly degrading economy.

People involved in the selling or buying of print have a lot to learn from QVC. The solutions they come up with to battle the downturn may just offer a road map for the rest of us on what consumers are buying and how to sell it.

A recent article from Media Life reports that magazines such as The Economist, OK!, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Women's Health, Wondertime, Men's Journal, Guideposts, Parents and more markedly increased their number of ad pages in the first quarter of '08. Reasons for this increase vary among titles, but the author of the article, Diego Vasquez, attributes it to "investing dollars...repositioning...creating new voices that reach readers in new ways... building staff...adding features to their web sites....selling aggressively...taking chances."

The methods profiled that led to each publication's respective page increase vary, but they share one commonality - the magazines have a clear understanding of what both their readers and marketers value in their publications, and they emphasize those strengths. To read the full content of the article, Click Here