"With the “shop ‘til you drop” adage now seemingly shunned and more open considerations being made towards bartering situations, the deepening of the Bush recession brings yet another interesting break with tradition."
US Recession Brings Some Unforeseen Changes
Big Business Hit Hard by Recession Jean-Paul Cassone' Monday, August 3, 2009VIEWS
In accessing data from the America’s Research Group’s May 7th press release it reflects that their new survey unearthed no discretionary spending going on in America; a recent fact coming straight from it’s CEO and founder, Britt Beemer. Mr. Beemer stated “people are not even thinking about buying things.” He goes on to mention “this is the first time in 30 years of consumer surveys that we’ve seen this low interest in shopping”!
ARG further suggests that 48.5% of consumers feel pressure from credit card bills, with 66.9% feeling that the deficit spending in Washington will render their children fewer opportunities and higher taxes. Shopping mall retailers seem to have been the hardest hit in all of this, with a 50% drop in across the board sales. In separate data from ARG only 1 in 10 shoppers confessed they would consider increasing their spending in 2009, due to the government stimulus and 1 in 4 revealed that they would not increase spending until 2011. I have also learned from other individuals closely related to this data that as much as 37% of women do not plan on making any apparel purchases for two more years. Deutsche Bank has also come out with figures that affect the flip side of those sentiments, the commercial real estate market. Their research demonstrates that by the end of 2009 commercial retail vacancies are expected to reach 13.5%, with 17% for office buildings. These figures could go higher, depending on the location. For example, vacancy rates in midtown Manhattan are already at 12% and are expected to reach 19% by year’s end. Putting an even more disturbing wrinkle in this general scenario; Craigslist has recently stated that “bartering” is up 100% at their websites from a year ago!
With the “shop ‘til you drop” adage now seemingly shunned and more open considerations being made towards bartering situations, the deepening of the Bush recession brings yet another interesting break with tradition. According to “hitwise” (an Experian company), the market share of visits to the top 10 News and Media websites declined by 3.8% from a year prior to March of 2007. “hitwise” emphasized that these figures indicate that news consumption is beginning to fragment as users expand their range of news sources to non-traditional news websites. The fact that CNBC recently offered all writers (including myself) within the “Seeking Alpha” website blog community to appear on their show, being a case in point. What all these statistical revelations are suggesting to me, is that this recession is likely less containable than we’re being led to believe and that with it will come many unexpected changes which in the end, could very well improve many things for the better!
I was born in Manhattan and patted on the head at the age of 3 by Howard Hughes on the steps of an old New York A&P which had sawdust on the floors. I've had close associations with former vice presidents of Aetna, Merrill Lynch, IBM, Smith Barney and Black Enterprise and was previously in wholesale distribution for Polo Ralph Lauren. After I married, I remained in China for 3 years doing business language coaching, conceptual instructions, negotiations and research for 25 separate organizations and companies such as Total-Fina-Elf, Rockwell Automation, Whirlpool, New Oriental School, Nanhua University of Industry and Commerce, Sci-Head Patient Lawyers and True Alaska Bottling. I'm currently employed with a small publishing firm in Palo Alto, CA.
