Business

Look before you leap...
by Barbora Misakova

Will Americans (and shoppers in general) turn into Scrooges? That is the question which scares and troubles merchants. Christmas is beyond a door and consumers are still waiting at the right moment. According to Associated Press-GfK poll which was conducted Nov. 5-9 and there were 1,006 adults involved in it showed that most of the people – 93 percent – will spend less or about the same as last year. Eighty percent of questioned respondents said they would use mostly cash to pay for their holiday shopping, what generally means buying less. Dr. Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N. Y. said: “If you have $100 in you! r pocket, and that’s all you can spend, you’ll look around and make a decision based on the amount of money you have.” On the other hands, credit cards allow people to make more impulse purchases, which are quite dangerous these days. Shopping by cash has very effective psychological effect on our mind and behavior. While shopping by credit cards is easier because you can’t see the amounts of money vanishing from your account, paying for goods in cash is more “honest”. Watching how your money is easily spent, is not very pleasant view and if you really want to spend less this year, I would recommend you this way of paying! If the consumers are going to be calm and sober in spending, the Black Friday will show. Until then we should have our eyes wide open, monitor prices in different stores and making decisions on the basis of our own market study.

related story (sgx15983): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/ap_on_bi_ge/us_ap_poll_s...

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 2:07 PM