Trends: Holiday Shopping 2011

As much as I love the traditions of Christmas & the holiday season, it doesn’t exist to me until Santa has closed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not coming earlier and earlier each year. The gift guides are slowly popping up along with trends and predictions. Here’s a peek at some of the forecasts: 

Consumers are estimated to pick clothing over gadgets this shopping season.

• Plan to buy more at Costco, less at Best Buy
• Confidence still weak
• However, purchases expected to increase from last year (est: 2.8% in sales in Nov & Dec)
• 70% plan to purchase apparel (which is apparently the same as last year)
• With focus on clothes over products, people will be willing to spend a little more on apparel
• $824 is the expected amount for Consumers to spend on Holiday shopping

To read more about  the effect of fuel prices, lack of innovative electronics and “Let’s Rock Elmo” being predicted as one of the best toys, see here

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• 72% get gift ideas from Facebook I’m going to assume that Pinterest will gain a lead as idea generator 
• 38% have already started shopping wait what?? pressure is on! 
• Free shipping is the winning deal that makes people more likely to purchase from a specific retailer  – they’re less interested in   free returns

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Do you buy yourself a holiday gift? 6 out of 10 consumers plan to spend an estimated $130.41 on themselves.

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 Top 10 Holiday trends for 2011 

The theme is going from practical & necessity  to “everyday appropriate”…people will be willing to pay a little more but expect it to be versatile and provide a lot of use …giving them their money’s worth.

The free shipping everyone loves (see infograph) … brought to you by 20,000 additionally hired Fed Ex employees.

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Oprah keeps her “Favorite Things” tradition alive….through her magazine. You wont be able to hear the audience’s gasps  but you will be able to rip out the pages for a shopping guide. So what made the cut ? Check out a few of her favorite things here.

Link Gathering: The Street Vendor Project, Smarter Lunchrooms & Food Aversions

• The Street Vendor Project : buy a protester a meal no matter where you are and support local vendors With Occupy Wall Street taking over street vendor territory, vendors have seen a decrease in revenue. To help support them a website was created to encourage continuing sales.

• Smarter Lunchrooms 2011   Given that I’m not heavily involved in school systems since I don’t have kids, am not a teacher and have been out of school for a while, I’ve only been mildly aware of  the lunchroom debates. Since I had to be knowledgable of nutrition since I entered the school system (the perks of being a Diabetic) I was always focused on making the healthy choices…I never really thought about those who weren’t. That said I know taking away the pizza and forcing vegetables wont work – it’s about incorporating both and learning about a “well-balanced meal plan.”  However, the psychology minor in me is loving this article about how design and presentation are equally important in leading to healthy decisions.  It’s all about presentation people.

• The Psychology of Food Aversions : our brain is just trying to protect us from being poisoned I am lucky to have not gotten violently ill in a long time (the whole going through College sober thing definitely helped with that) so while I may have love / hate relationships with certain foods no serious food aversions here. {Please don’t let me get food poisoning tonight…}

• Retailers are expanding their product offering to become a one stop shop…in attempt of downsizing their square footage & going urban in the near future. Target offers more fresh fruit Walmart increase it’s Neighborhood Market grocery stores Walgreen, with it’s acquisition of Duane Reade  offers beauty services.

• Starbucks is expanding into the juice market.

Link Gathering: Laundry Packing, Girl Scouts pitch to CEO & Parents hide candy

It’s so common for us to throw a little extra detergent in with our load of laundry. Extra soap means that our jeans will become realllly clean right ? Maybe it’s fear of running a whole cycle with not enough soap resulting in a washer of wet still dirty clothes – wasting our time and money. Did you ever think that maybe it’s because we don’t know how much to actually put in? I mean, hey laundry was one of the first chores I learned, but think about it, how often do you pour out the detergent estimating the suggested line? They put it inside the cup, just enough to let us know it’s there to give a sense of help and direction but enough to be vague. And to guide us to add just a little bit more to make sure it’s enough.

Blog Her author, Spinneo, smartly points out this packaging design ….and suggests using a sharpie to outsmart the design. 

I was never a Girl Scout, the closest I ever got to a badge was what my American Girl Doll earned. Needless to say, any 12 and 13 year old that creates an app and gets the opportunity to pitch it to AT&T CEOs  gets impressive points from me.

 Children aren’t too happy when their parents tell them they ate all their Halloween Candy.

Parents submitted videos revealing how their kids reacted when they told them that their Halloween Candy was gone to Jimmy Kimball Live. Some people aren’t to please at subjecting kids to emotions for humor. Given that the kids will most likely get the candy back minus a piece or two I see it as harmless. But maybe that’s because I always knew I wasn’t getting my whole candy bag anyways. (yeah, put a Diabetic kid through Halloween – that’s cruel).

Awesomeness: Movember & Birds

 {shefinds}

(what may be equally awesome – Picnik has a whole Movember section of icons)

Mashable announced that Mr. Clean is also getting in on the Movember action, becoming the first  & only icon in North America to become an ambassador for the cause.

–   Read all about MOVEMBER – 

                                                                                                                                                              Safe behind a screen this is amazing … in person it might be a little more terrifying

Trends: At this rate Christmas really will be in July (retail)

10 points for Nordstrom.

We think it’s important to celebrate each holiday on its own so we’re doing it again this year. – Colin Johnson, company spokesman

Nordstrom knows what its customers want. And it’s not Christmas before Halloween.

While the holiday shopping season seems to come upon us earlier and earlier each year, Nordstrom is standing by tradition and wont haul out the decorations until the day after Thanksgiving.

We try to be careful about not being over promotional…Our customers appreciate it and it seems to work well for us. – Johnson

Read more about why it works here

Link Gathering: Plus Size Salons, Sesame St Addresses Hunger & Vending Machine Pizza

• A salon catering to only the plus sized.  | She Finds

Apparently as a result of overweight clients feeling discriminated against. I get it, I think. The movie scene of salons filled with glamorous people getting their weekly highlights amongst other spa treatments …or something like that. I usually just feel discriminated against for my dark circles & ragged look  of neglected “me time.”

• Cutest blog pregnancy announcement | words & wardrobe

• Sesame Street aired a special episode addressing hunger and food scarcity among children. | Blog Her

The article interestingly asks if the aim is to comfort children facing the problem or to bring awareness to children who might not know their classmates struggles ? 

•  Spotted in Marie Claire’s October issue, a collaboration between Sprint and fashion blogger Jessica Quirk from What I Wore, upon the release of her new book. Gary Kim touches upon it in his article. | Content Marketing Institute News

• These days you can get anything from a vending machine: soda, bathing suits, candy, condoms and now freshly made pizza. Because hey, why not? | PSFK

Link Gathering: Faxes, Gray Hair, Self Check Out & Holiday Vendors

• The Office Stylist asked Do you still use a fax machine? Really surprised that majority voted that they use it daily.

Why do people still use fax machines? I hate when a venue/business will only operate through fax. Why not use email where you can make sure the document is received by the right person? Like myself, the author prefers reading print over digital for books and magazines but thinks faxes need to be marked obsolete. 

• L’Oreal is aiming to have a pill that will prevent gray hair within the next four years. | bellasugar

Now, while I have a whole slew of questions like why and what??, the most obvious one: wont this cannibalize sales of hair dye ? 

• Some supermarkets are cutting back on self-checkout lanes. So what sends people to the cashier lane? Some miss the human interaction (ie: customer service), others would rather skip over the slow machines, delays and confusions. | Supermarket Guru

I pretty sure half the time I use self-checkout lanes it requires me to call someone over, taking more time and frustration – and no smiles to be found in that situation. 

• A quick look back on the history of blogging | get busy media via Brazen Careerist

• An article from Jennifer Perkins advising vendors that a marketing plan is just as important as the product display for upcoming holiday (already??) craft shows. | blogher

Fortune Cookie Quote : accomplish with passion

I can’t remember the last time I had a fortune cookie, but oddly enough one came in my asian fusion lunch today.

Nothing in the world is accomplished without passion.

Seems fitting.

Link Gathering: High School reading, Starbucks Tshirts, & a party for Martha Stewart

Can you imagine the pressure of planning a party for Martha Stewart? How about her 70th birthday? | yumsugar

Please tell me that people don’t actually add their children’s names to their resume. They are not references. | ask a manager

I’m not a fan of Halloween. I’m just not. However, here’s an interesting perspective of adapting to the culture of the holiday | blogher

10 Books you should have read in High School. I didn’t read any of them {we did read To Kill a Mockingbird in 7th grade to be fair}…trying to remember what we read instead… |msnbc

People complain that their custom-order Frappuccino is expensive, how about an $85 T-shirt from Starbucks ? | peoplestylewatch

I alway knew that I was listening better when I doodled. |bnet

Brilliant idea: Food Allergen Detector

A while back I happened to catch part of a True Life story, a show I haven’t watched in years. The featured people had severe severe food allergies. Seeing someone carefully taking the risk to try something new and going into a reaction triggered something in me. A low blood sugar isn’t the same, in my management so far, with proper care & talking myself through it, I can control the situation. But I couldn’t help relate to it a little bit: the weakness, the frustration, the consequences of a wrong decision – even if you thought it was ok. I read a lot of healthy living blogs as well, often people talk about their relationship with food; some medical, some not. Growing up being constantly aware of food and reactions in my own life, it’s been interesting to hear other people’s experiences – to hear about completely different situations that are the same.

source: pfsk

Sooooooo, when I came across this Food Allergen Detector on PFSK, I instantly thought BRILLIANT! Now, not having an allergen, I can’t really understand how helpful or not the detector would be. I wont really know the pros & cons … just as few non-diabetics do when they’re talking to me about an insulin pump, but I can’t help but think of how many lives this may make easier.

This may come across as surprising but I strongly believe that things like this need to be making innovation headlines over a cure for diabetes.  If Apple can come up with a phone that is my life line in every other sense, shouldn’t there be numerous devices out there supporting various medical needs?

PS. recommend watching the product video.