Retailers could be in for surge of holiday shopping procrastinators

Now that retailers have put their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales behind them, many are gearing up for another potential gantlet this holiday season: a possible crush of procrastinators hitting their stores and websites at the last minute.

In a call with reporters Monday, Shawn Dubravac, senior director of research at the Consumer Technology Association, said the group has found customers this year are more inclined to delay their shopping and did not start their research as early as they have in previous years.

That change in behavior, Dubravac said, may in part be a reflection of the change in the rhythm of seasonal deals, which are no longer confined to Black Friday but are spread out over several days or weeks.

“They no longer feel this rush of urgency to go out and grab what they want. Inventories seem better positioned, so they're feeling like they can do it in a more leisurely way,” Dubravac said.

Online shoppers, though, could end up paying for waiting until the last minute: Shipping prices will start to climb next week, according to projections released Monday by Adobe, whose software is used by many retailers. Beginning Dec. 15, Adobe said, shipping costs will increase about 15 percent each day.

Dubravac and Jack Kleinhenz, the chief economist of the National Retail Federation, said they did not see signs that terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., will keep shoppers on the sidelines in the run-up to Christmas.

“It clearly leaves consumers unsettled and upset, but I don't know that consumers broadly view all of these terrorist attacks in a very connected way, such that it changes their overall perception of the trajectory of the economy,” Dubravac said.

Based on early signals, spending for the holiday season got off to a relatively strong start: Adobe said Monday that retailers were on pace to pull in $1.92 billion in online sales that day, a figure that would surpass the sales haul they rang up on Thanksgiving Day. That followed record-breaking sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Kleinhenz said one wild card for retailers in the coming weeks has been unseasonably warm weather in many parts of the country. Several major retailers have said in recent weeks they believe this has hurt clothing sales. If cooler temperatures finally arrive, it could give a much-needed lift to the apparel industry.

Dubravac said he expects to see particular sales momentum in the coming weeks behind smartwatches and drones. Smartwatches, he said, are likely to see half of their annual sales volume rung up in the last eight weeks of the year. And after people noticed drones splashed over many holiday circulars, Dubravac predicts curious shoppers who haven't seen the gadgets before might get more curious about them in the final sprint of the season.