Mall of America not phased by low consumer confidence levels

By MILO SYBRANT
Observer Staff

Mall of America photo

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Despite low consumer confidence levels, as reported in a recent survey conducted by Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, holiday shoppers still flocked to the stores in the pre-dawn hours at the Mall of America on the morning of Black Friday.

Woodbury, Minn., resident Scott Burton arrived at 6:15 a.m. on Black Friday — the unofficial first day of holiday sales which falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving. He stood in line at the Apple store until its doors opened at 8 a.m. On his shopping list: a wireless router.

Nathan Hundt of Robbinsdale, Minn., arrived at the mall with his sister at 7:30 a.m. This was Hundt’s first time coming to the mall on Black Friday. However, the principal item on his agenda today was not shopping; it was people watching.

“I’ve always wanted to come to the mall [on Black Friday] to watch people filter in,” Hundt said. “So, I don’t go shopping, I just watch the people.”

Hundt said that shoppers were still just trickling into the mall at 8:30 a.m.

“Right now, it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of people here,” Hundt said. “When I got here, there was no one. And now you see it slowly building.”

Hundt said that he did not know if reports of low consumer confidence would be a factor in his friends’ and family members’ shopping during the holiday season.

“It isn’t curbing my spending at all,” he said.

Dang Trinh, a St. Paul, Minn., resident who had come to the mall with out-of-town guests, was skeptical about forecasts that sales would be low this holiday season.

“They say that [consumer confidence is low]. But I don’t think that affects things at all,” said Trinh. “They predicted the economy would be low. But I think there are a lot of sales going on this year.”

Trinh said that consumer financial planning helped keep retail sales high during the holidays.

“Everybody plans their budgets well throughout the year so that they can save for the big holidays.”

Retail industry charts gains

Trinh, Hundt and others at the Mall of America on Black Friday were not the only ones who were skeptical about economists’ projections that 2007 would be a bad year for holiday retail sales. The National Retail Federation, a U.S.- based retail industry association, reported in its 2007 Black Friday Weekend Survey that more than 147 million shoppers took to the nation’s stores that weekend.

The retail federation said this number represented a 4.8 percent increase from the prior year.

Consumers take holiday shopping online

Brick-and-mortar retailers weren’t the only ones who posted gains in sales. According to the retail federation, traffic to retail Web sites on Cyber Monday, the online analog of Black Friday, which takes place on the Monday following Thanksgiving, rose by more than a 25 percent in 2006.

Black Friday and, more recently, Cyber Monday have become milestones for the U.S. retail industry, and many economists regard them as harbingers of the subsequent holiday shopping season.

Regardless of these two key days’ performances, the time between now and the upcoming holidays will be a crucial determinant in the retail industry’s success this season.