Welcome back to cheddar is closing bell. So today
is black friday and it traditionally kicks off the holiday
shopping season. But for many, it began weeks
ago with many folks getting their holiday shopping done early
because of factors like supply chain issues, rising inflation
and covid 19. But despite those challenges, new
data from Deloitte finds consumer sentiment around black friday is
actually high retail leader Jenna pagodas. Selsky joins us
now to break it all down and Jenna, can
you offer some more details on Deloitte's survey on black
friday and what it found? Sure, Absolutely.
So one of the big things was black friday is
back this year is what we were hearing when we
did our survey and in fact 31% of shoppers said
that they would be shopping black friday this year and
that's up from 24% last year, which is great
news. Um, and that's also$430 of spend
um, this year compared to last year, which
is about a 5% increase. So really exciting.
I was actually out this morning live at the King
of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia pennsylvania. And
I could certainly echo those sentiments. Um, I've
gone the past couple of years and saw a lot
of folks um, even trickling in at 5 30
this morning uh, in time for first doors opening
at six AM now we're still in the middle of
a pandemic with growing fear over this new variant,
which isn't helping our situation at all. So how
does consumer interest around black friday this year compared to
last year, which was a much different time of
the pandemic even before vaccines were available. Sure.
So we have of course, updated data that consumers
are a little less concerned of course than than last
year heading into stores. Um, you know,
online still sort of wins the day. Um,
62% of holiday spend will be online. Um,
but that's actually up this year. Um, in
store spending is actually up this year, which,
which is excellent and black friday is certainly a time
for folks to get together with family and friends.
You know, shopping the halls, the mall this
morning. You can see a lot of folks together
, young, younger teenagers together in groups and you
also saw a lot of moms and daughters, I'd
say almost a sort of Gilmore girls effect. Um
, and it was nice to see, you know
, horse, there's covid protocols and caution. Um
, you know, there's certainly lines that were waiting
out outside of a few fan favorites. Um,
but just, you know, they were slowly letting
folks in. Um, and making sure that folks
felt safe. Um, folks were wearing masks and
of course all the hand sanitizer stations were ready to
go um, in all, in all the store
locations. Now, a new report from Adobe found
that online sales over the holidays are on track the
top$200 billion dollars in Deloitte. Deloitte forecasting similar
projections. So actually we're planning individual households spend about
$1,463 per household, which is up 5% um from
last year, which really shows um consumer sentiment is
up. Um and I think it's partially attributable to
the fact that 68% of folks I feel more comfortable
in in their own financial income um or the same
as last year. So I think, I think
that's a big, big piece of the growth.
So, and I think retailers are feeling the same
sort of sentiment as well um and are eager for
for these increases that they missed out on last year
. So your report found supply chain challenges and inflation
have already impacted holiday shoppers and will continue to,
could you offer some details about this? Yeah,
absolutely. So, uh I'd like to call it
the the grinch of the holiday season is certainly supply
chain this year and even before the black friday event
, um folks were in store shopping earlier than ever
, um which with the majority of spend happening prior
to black friday this year, which you know,
is lending itself to sort of a longer shopping season
than before. Now, Deloitte's report also found that
35% of shoppers will spend more or over the holidays
than originally planned. So how does your company forecast
this? And what is leading to that overspending?
So I think it's it's a few things, right
? So we actually survey about 4000 consumers and that's
, it's sort of their um, information, what
their plan is to sort of spend for the holiday
. And I would say, I think people are
excited to do some rebound shopping. Um, they're
excited to get back in stores. Uh, they're
happy, like I said, with their, with
their financial situation and I think overall consumer sentiment is
up and they're ready to go. Um, you
know, and like I said, I certainly certainly
saw that today, which was nice to see when
it comes to wages increasing and increases in these companies
offering more incentives and bonuses. Do you think with
more cash in american's pockets, we're only going to
see this number of spending increase as the holiday seasons
continue to come around. Yes, absolutely, I
do. And, and one thing that I saw
while shopping in stores in addition to certainly all of
the sale signs is, you know, retailers are
also in demand for jobs, right? Um,
right next to the 60% off sale or the 50%
off sale, you can see we're hiring. Um
, so certainly that's another aspect that we're grappling with
this holiday season as well. All right Jenna poor
Garcelle, Ski retail leader at Deloitte, I appreciate
your time. Thank you so much for staying with
us and I hope you have a nice holiday