Holiday sales are forecasted to grow by about 4 percent this holiday season, powered by a strong jobs market, but big chain retailers might not be so merry once the holiday shopping season comes to an end, according to a report from Bloomberg.
According to a new report from Deloitte, consumers are increasingly ditching the Walmarts and Macy’s of the world and shifting their spending to smaller, more niche retailers. These upstarts have helped to shift $200 billion in annual sales away from big chain brands over the past five years, according to the report.
“You’ve got a lot of small startups that are nibbling away a little bit of the volume at a time,” according to Rod Sides, vice chairman of Deloitte. “Everyone’s worried about the Amazon effect and those kinds of players, but at the end of the day, it’s the smaller websites that focus on a specific product category and whittle away at market share.”
Online sales are expected to go up as much as 19 percent this year to $98 billion this holiday shopping season, and the report indicated that U.S. consumers are feeling better about the economy and their job prospects, meaning they are more likely to want to spend more this holiday season. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. personal savings rate fell to 5.7 percent of disposable income for July, down from a 6.2 percent rate in March.
“People are still saving more, but just not as much as they were in the past,” Sides said. “They feel more confident about their employment and their wages.”
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