Retail predictions in the Christmas wash-up

Happy New Year. As you read this blog (which was written on December 23, 2009) Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day will be behind us. So here are a few product and retailer performance predictions made before the retail madness hit.

Now, the great thing about making these predictions is that only a few thousand senior execs working for retailers, manufacturers and research companies will know how accurate or wide off the mark they are! If I am close please let me know as the sale data becomes available.

And to everyone else, if you received one of the products from a store I’ve listed below or, as a shopper, entered stores and observed the happy shoppers there, I would also be very interested to hear from you.

iPhones, Wii games and accessories, Netbooks, Blu-ray players and yet more HD flat panel TVs will have flown out of stores – and all for different reasons.

• iPhones went from “early adopter high-use business user” in marketing speak to “teenage Christmas present on a $100 plan.”
• Wii games went from “I have had Wii Fit and two controllers for a year” to “I want the whole family playing and I need two new controllers and some of those new games”.
• Netbooks went from “I have a $1,200 notebook and full Windows and don’t use 80% of the Apps” to “I only use my PC to surf the web and use all the online Apps, so only need to spend $600 for a cute little mobile PC that I can use for Facebook”.
• Blu-ray players and HD panels went mainstream “because they are cheap and the content and the TVs look soooo good!”

From hardware to high-end department stores, and much in between, great shopper experiences will have syphoned money out of happy shoppers’ wallets and purses all holiday long.

• Bunnings will have had HUGE sales between Christmas and New Year as hundreds of thousands of new first home owners with bare walls and time on their hands turned their new house or unit into a home.
• JB HiFi, Woolworths and Coles will have sold more prepaid phones than ever before, as new telco shopper points became the norm over Christmas.
• Smiggle will have sold out of stock in most of its stores and will have had many bare and empty shelves during this period.
• Myer will have had the best Christmas in a decade.
• Every newly refurbished Coles, Woolworths, T-life, Dan Murphy’s, Target, Kmart and Big W will have increased same store sales by up to 15% over old format stores.
• ALDI will have become a normal grocery store visit, alongside visits to Woolworths and Coles, for over 10,000 shoppers.
• Retailer own-label grocery product will have grown by 2% market share, and maintain that growth share increase through 2010.

Oh and my favourite coffee shop, Jay’s Nest, and my favourite yoghurt, Jalna, will have had their highest December sales ever. Why? Because they both offer genuinely excellent shopper experiences every time anybody shops them. Jay’s Nest, a hand written red heart on every takeaway coffee cup, and Jalna with its top of tub messaging, which features a festive Christmas cow this year.

Click here for more Retail Trends blogs.

In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.