Holiday shopping: Time to treat ourselves?
We are supposed to be buying gifts for other people now. You know, checking items off the list for our siblings, parents, spouses, children and friends.
But more and more of us are also picking up something for ourselves.
More than half of the people who shop during the Christmas holiday season plan to buy something for themselves, according to a National Retail Federation report released in October.
And that number has crept up in the few years that the federation has asked the question.
The Holiday Consumer Spending Survey, conducted in early October, found that 55 percent of the 7,276 respondents planned to purchase items for themselves.
A survey conducted by H.H. Gregg, the electronics-and-appliances store chain, found that last year, one-third of its Black Friday shoppers were shopping for items for themselves.
Why?
"The bigger the bargain the more tempting it is (to buy the item for yourself)," said Lars Perner, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Southern California.
Perner specializes in studying consumer behavior, including bargain-hunting. "The holiday season has the best bargain opportunities of the entire year," he observed.
So yes, Reason 1, no kidding: You can get things for less than you would normally spend. Especially really nifty things such as electronic items, Perner said.
Vicki Kindl of Geneva agreed.
"It is going to be my birthday in a week, so I feel I kind of deserve it," she said on Nov. 14, while shopping for a replacement iPhone at an AT&T store in Geneva.
She and her daughter, Mollie Mills of Chicago, were also shopping for other items for themselves that day. Neither felt that was unusual. Mills said she isn't married, doesn't have children, and only gives Christmas gifts to three people.
"I buy for myself year around, but when it comes close to Christmas I buy more because the deals are better," Mills said. " ... So when the deals are going, I'm going to stock up and take advantage of it."
Who wouldn't want to "save" $700 on a 60-inch Samsung 4K Ultra HD television set? On Nov. 11, you could get one at Best Buy for $1,499. On Black Friday, it's marked at $799. (Whether stores will have enough in stock to satisfy demand is a subject for another article.)
Or maybe your coffee maker is showing signs that its end is near, and you want to try one of those Keurig single-serving machines. It will cost you about one-third less on Black Friday.
More recently, stores you wouldn't think of for gifts - Staples and Home Depot, for example - have jumped on the holiday-sale bandwagon. As big-box, category-killer stores they, too, count on volume of sales to make a profit.
So, according to Perner, they will advertise some items that might qualify as a gift, such as a tablet computer, or holiday decor, at a deep discount, hoping that it will bring in traffic by consumers who also will buy other items.
For online shoppers, besides the lure of discounted prices, there's all that free shipping.
"If it is a deliberate strategy and you have made up your mind how much you want to spend," Perner said buying for yourself at this time can be a fine thing to do.
But an unplanned purchase made in the heat of the moment, "that could be more of a dangerous type of situation," where you aren't thinking clearly about whether the item is worth the money you are spending, he warned.