holiday shopping

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Amazon Has 'Best Ever' Holiday Season

Online retailer beat the market with HDTVs, iPods, and Wii

(Newser) - The Grinch apparently didn’t sour shoppers on Amazon this year: The company said today the 2008 holiday season was its “best ever,” MarketWatch reports. Amazon sold more than 6.3 million items worldwide on Dec. 15, its peak day, amounting to “a record-breaking 72.9 items...

Gift-Givers Get Crafty In Tight Holiday Times

Sales of craft supplies and handmade items shine

(Newser) - Although the economic downturn has nearly everyone pinching pennies, craft stores are watching theirs stack up as holiday gift-givers are saving money by making their own gifts or buying handmade items from others, the New York Times reports. While overall retail revenues in November were off 7.4% from last...

Desperate Retailers Offer 24-Hour Shopping

More stores are extending hours to catch last-minute shoppers, night owls

(Newser) - With the holiday shopping season on track to be the worst in decades, more struggling retailers like Toys "R" Us, Macy's, and Wal-Mart are opting to keep their doors open 24 hours the last few days, hoping to entice last-minute shoppers and night-owls, reports the Wall Street Journal. "...

Shoppers Turn to Funny, Useful Gifts

Boots, joke books, comfort clothes score big in recession

(Newser) - Christmas shoppers are thinking small this year, and the gifts they're buying reveal how Americans are coping with recession, USA Today reports. Here's a list of today's trends:
  • Practical: Nearly half of the most popular items searched for online were boots, according to one mall inventory service. Gifts that help
...

Storms Threaten to Wipe Out Retailers' Last Hopes

Double whammy for desperate stores struggling to sell in last holiday week

(Newser) - Retailers were extending hours and cutting prices deeper in a last-ditch attempt to attract a final wave of holiday shoppers and mitigate the impact of major storms in the Midwest, Northwest and Northeast, Reuters reports. Some two-thirds of shoppers still have holiday shopping left to do, according to surveys, but...

Sold-Out Kindles Still Available—for a Price

Amazon loses out as savvy buyers trade e-book for big returns

(Newser) - Amazon.com has run out of Kindle e-book readers, sending their prices soaring on the second-hand market and on sites like eBay, reports Bloomberg. Ever since an Oprah endorsement in October cleaned out the online retailer’s stock, those with Kindles in hand have sought to secure a return on...

Declines in Gift Cards, Self-Splurges Hurt Retailers

(Newser) - Naughty or nice, America’s retail stores can’t look forward to two of the holiday season’s usual boons: gift card sales and “self-gifting” splurges, MarketWatch reports. About 44% of shoppers say they will not buy gift cards this year, up from 26% last year, a marketing study...

Trampled Worker's Family Sues Wal-Mart

And more lawsuits coming over Black Friday trampling on Long Island

(Newser) - The family of the Wal-Mart temp worker who was trampled to death by a Black Friday stampede has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in New York's state Supreme Court against the retailer and the Long Island mall where the store is located. The family also filed notice that Nassau County,...

Israeli Salesmen the Kings of the Mall Kiosk

Pushy vendors bring bazaar-culture to holiday shopping

(Newser) - Chances are that shopping-mall cart vendor offering you spa lotions or whimsical toys this Christmas season is an Israeli transplant who knows how to hustle and haggle. Cart owners avoid hiring shyer Americans because "Israelis are natural-born closers," said one marketing director, and they're edging out other Turkish,...

Was Wal-Mart Trampling a Crime?

Experts mixed on whether death can be prosecuted

(Newser) - Trampling a Long Island Wal-Mart worker in a frenzied rush for flat-screen TVs may be a prosecutable crime, reports Newsday, but experts are split. “In order to prosecute a homicide, you have to establish that someone caused a death," said a lawyer. "If I stepped on his...

Holiday Sales Surge on Deep Discounts

But retailers worry huge bargains may cut deeply into their profits

(Newser) - Desperate retailers received a jolt of good news this weekend as shoppers poured into stores and spent 7% more—an average $372.57 each—than they did a year ago, reports the New York Times. But Black Friday glee may be replaced with gloom as retailers tote up the slim...

Shoppers Are Even Grinchier Than Expected

Over a third of shoppers spent less than the same time last year

(Newser) - Holiday shopping sales are looking even worse than forecast, Reuters reports. A new survey conducted over the traditional weekend launch of holiday gift-buying, found that 38% of shoppers said they spent less over the weekend than during the same period last year—and 30% were unimpressed by this year's discounts....

Wal-Mart Death a Fitting Symbol of the Times
 Wal-Mart Death a Fitting
 Symbol of the Times
ANALYSIS
Nov 30, 2008 1:54 PM CST

Wal-Mart Death a Fitting Symbol of the Times

Desperate consumers, ailing economy make for dangerous combination

(Newser) - When shoppers charged into a Long Island Wal-Mart at the stroke of 5am Friday and trampled to death a temp who happened to get between them and the $388 flatscreen TVs inside,“it was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident,” Peter Goodman writes in...

Strapped Budgets Make for Better Gifts


 Strapped Budgets 
 Make for Better Gifts 
opinion
Nov 29, 2008 4:10 PM CST

Strapped Budgets Make for Better Gifts

Use a signature gift to cut costs, give meaningfully

(Newser) - Tight budgets are forcing Americans to skirt the season's traditional buying frenzy and make gifts that put "emphasis on people, not stuff," Melissa Magsaysay writes in the Los Angeles Times. She's creating "a creative signature gift" of Ugandan beads that she's turning into bracelets: The...

Wal-Mart Worker Killed in Black Friday Stampede

Another woman miscarries

(Newser) - Black Friday bargain hunters trampled an employee to death this morning at a Long Island Wal-Mart, the New York Daily News reports. Another woman had a miscarriage in the stampede. The unidentified employee had been trying to hold the unruly crowd back, but the crowd knocked him down and ran...

Shoppers Can't Halt Commercial Mortgage Crisis

Retailers will default, no matter how many sweaters you buy today

(Newser) - Black Friday shoppers hunting for holiday bargains won't be enough to stave off what's likely to become the next economic crisis. Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market. Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, SC, also are about...

Twitchy Retail Braces for Black Season

'Black Friday' starts days early and continues throughout season

(Newser) - For years, retailers across America have dubbed today Black Friday, when shoppers descend like locusts on cut-price merchandise to signal the start of the holiday season. But as the New York Times reports, stores have been slashing prices for weeks now, often with little effect. From toys to electronics to...

'Bleak Friday' May Keep TV Prices Down All Season

Deals on flat screens could extend all month

(Newser) - If your holiday wish list includes a flat-panel TV, you may not have to battle crowds on Black Friday to land a deal, reports the Wall Street Journal. Struggling electronics retailers anticipating a bleak holiday season are likely to extend traditionally low day-after-Thanksgiving prices—which could top 50% savings on...

Learn to Live With Less
 Learn to Live With Less 
OPINION
Nov 23, 2008 12:44 PM CST

Learn to Live With Less

Couple pledged to buy only necessities for 12 months

(Newser) - Light wallets may seem particularly woeful around the holidays, when cheer often comes with a retail pricetag. But shopping binges, while they may be satisfying, ultimately just add to overconsumption problems worldwide, Judith Levine writes in the Washington Post. So she and her partner tried something new: They went a...

Oprah's Newest Favorite Thing: Thrift

Talk-show host's holiday goodie bag will be unusually downscale this year

(Newser) - Oprah’s favorite things this year are cheap, cheap, cheap, Us Magazine reports. The TV host, who usually gives away pricey items on an annual holiday show, will bow to the economy and push affordable stocking-stuffers instead. The Nov. 26 airing also includes DIY tips, with viewers meeting “a...

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