{"id":1375302,"date":"2013-10-28T10:52:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T18:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/28\/consumers-holiday-gift-giving-budgets-slightly-reduced-this-year\/"},"modified":"2013-11-04T10:53:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T18:53:18","slug":"consumers-holiday-gift-giving-budgets-slightly-reduced-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/28\/consumers-holiday-gift-giving-budgets-slightly-reduced-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumers’ holiday gift giving budgets slightly reduced this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The holiday season is the busiest and most important shopping period of the year. Retailers are preparing to meet the surge of customers by hiring on new staff, purchasing a healthy stock of additional goods and improving both their e-commerce offerings and store operations<\/a> to cater to all of their patrons. However, merchants should ready themselves for a slight decrease in their customers' budgets. <\/p>\n

Recent findings from the National Retail Federation (NRF) anticipate that consumers will be spending less this holiday season<\/a>. Consumers will be spending $737.95 on average, a 2 percent decrease from last year. NRF predicts that self-gifting will experience a similar reduction. But while shopping budgets might be lower, total retail sales are still expected to increase by 3.9 percent from 2012 to each $602.1 billion. <\/p>\n

While brick-and-mortar sales will still be key to retail success this season, brands that emphasize their e-commerce merchandising<\/a> may still benefit from an uptick in profits due to a potential 15 percent rise in online purchases. Because many customers will be shopping on smartphones and tablets, it is important that retailers use a versatile point of sale<\/a> system that works easily across all platforms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merchants should ready themselves for a slight decrease in their customers’ budgets. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1375303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-commerce","category-retail-merchandising-and-marketing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1375303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}