Britt Beemer Christmas Quotations

It's a typical, mediocre Christmas season. But we've gone through the last years with no hot new toy and no hot apparel look. There's no reason to shop early.

I don't think the day is the kind of day that retailers thought it would be. Christmas Eve is seldom the big day because of the fact that so many consumers ... want to be home.

One thing that shocked me was that the number of consumers planning to buy gift cards this Christmas is not as big as last year.

Overall, the moderate-priced stores such as J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart had good traffic levels. We think luxury sales were probably flat this past weekend because more people said they decided to go away on vacation before Christmas this year than last year. So this could have impacted spending on other high-end items.

J.C. Penney will probably be the most promotional store this year, similar to last year, and they'll probably have a good Christmas because of it.

There are a lot of wealthy income consumers that have given a lot of money to hurricane funds, and they're saying they're doing that in lieu of Christmas gifts,

They will not make that mistake again this year, ... They could actually take a flat Christmas and move it up a half percent.

The success of GM's employee discount sale is a great example that consumers still are in a mood to buy. However, I think Christmas spending could be a little narrower than last year.

I've never seen this many consumers not done with their Christmas shopping.

I'm worried right now that we could have the first negative Christmas selling season in two decades,

Customers are being just as protective with their gift cards as they were with their own money when buying Christmas gifts. The idea of free money is all in the past. They want value or something very special.

The closer you get to Christmas, there's this mentality on the part of consumers where they're willing to go out just a little bit more to get the even bigger discounts.

I think retailers will hold prices up to 40 percent off before Christmas and then go even deeper in January to clear inventory. No doubt, heavy discounts help sales but they hurt profits. And retailers, more than ever, know that they have to answer to Wall Street and not Main Street.

I think the big story of Christmas will be this shift in consumer attitudes where people felt that stores gouged them with their pricing strategy. The 30 to 40 percent discounts this year instead of the 50 to 70 percent off last year will help profits but will hurt customer loyalty in the long term.

More Americans are waiting to the end to shop for Christmas than any other time in the last 10 years. The consumer was never excited about anything that they saw this Christmas.