Saturday, November 29, 2008
"Black Friday" sales were stronger than expected
"Black Friday" sales were stronger than expected; preliminary estimates suggest that they are actually up 3% over last year. What with all the discounts, it is not obvious how profitable those sales will be, but sales are sales and they reveal that many Americans are still willing to trade dollars for stuff.
In his column this morning, Floyd Norris noted that lower percentages of Americans say they expect to buy a house or a car in the next six months than at any time since 1982 (in the case of houses) or in the entire 40 year history of the survey (in the case of cars). How to reconcile this with surprisingly not-terrible Black Friday sales? Well, if you decide you can get along with your old car for another couple of years -- most new automobile purchases are, after all, essentially luxuries, insofar as you can almost always make your old one last longer -- and that you will not be furnishing a new house any time soon, you might then decide that you can afford to buy some reasonably nice Christmas presents for your family. The economy may indeed be shrinking, but that does not mean that all businesses are shrinking.
[Corrected.]
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Nov 29, 11:24:00 PM:
I don't believe it. I was shocked to see no lines at all outside Circuit City and Staples where they had people sleeping in tents last year. The Best Buy line at 2AM was rather small. At 5PM at Kohls there was NO LINE at any register unlike last year.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Nov 30, 05:39:00 AM:
Yeah, and my informal surveys of cashiers also suggest that sales are lower. On the other hand, Princeton MarketFair was very busy last night. The Barnes & Noble was bursting, as was the TGI Friday's. We go to both of them fairly often, and apart from a Harry Potter's book release I am not sure I've seen the bookstore so busy.
By smitty1e, at
Sun Nov 30, 09:12:00 AM:
As far as cars go, I plan to match the bailout of Detroit by bailing out of buying another car until 2013.
By , at
Sun Nov 30, 06:39:00 PM:
Note, too, that the results are highly regionalized. If you exclude Southern California, the national picture looks even brighter. I think that what we're seeing is that PMA is the most important factor.
