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 Except she wasn't buying for other people.
The 39-year-old was waiting to get herself an iPad. In her cart was
the xBox her husband had been coveting, and her father was in
another part of the store hunting down a giant, cheap TV - for
himself.
Retailers call this self-gifting. Look at a major store's circular
advertising holiday gifts - from the $5 toasters at Kohl's to a $279
Dyson vacuum at Target - and you'll see the top draws are items
people typically buy for themselves.
Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at NPD Group, started tracking
the trend of self-gifting six years ago, after interviewing a
shopper on Black Friday at a Macy's.
The woman had a huge pile of clothes over one arm and a smaller pile
on her other. Cohen was surprised to learn that woman was buying the
big pile for herself. Her mother and sister were the designated
recipients of the other pile.
Now 30 percent of purchases over the Thanksgiving holiday are
attributed to self-gifting, Cohen says. Surveys from the National
Retail Federation bear this out, showing that 77 percent of shoppers
took advantage of discounts to buy for themselves over the holiday
weekend.
Toys are the obvious exception, but almost everything else - the
TVs, the home goods, even the clothing - are items that people are
often buying for themselves.
Retailers have been catching on, adjusting inventories and
messaging. Kathy Grannis, spokesperson for the NRF, points to a
pop-up gift tag ad recently on Gap's website that read "From Us to
You," and was clearly meant to engage self-gifters.
For clothing retailers, Grannis says the enticements to shoppers are
often in the form of a significant discount off the whole store. Old
Navy offered half off everything on Thanksgiving Day, which drew
Sarita Henriquez, 36, of Burlington, New Jersey, to shop for
herself, with no set spending limit in mind.
"I'm being greedy this year," Henriquez said as she waited in her
car for the store to open at 4 p.m.
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"I hear self-gifting reported as greediness, but there's really more
nuance than that," says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist and
author of "Decoding the New Consumer Mind."
Yarrow breaks down self-gifting holiday shoppers to three types:
those buying special things like outfits and decor in order to be
more social; those delaying purchases because they are expecting
bargains and those who are buying on impulse based on what's
available.
Impulse buyers are the key target for retailers' special doorbusters.
These are folks like the Hartman brothers, (Ed, 25, Shawn, 24, and
Tyler, 21) who, while visiting family for Thanksgiving, each waited
for cheap TVs at a Best Buy near Cherry Hill, New Jersey to put in
their own homes.
Cohen's advice for shoppers who missed out on the early sales and
are still waiting for big discounts: "Be patient and wait for the
price to come to you."
Don't obsess over getting the absolute rock-bottom prices if it
means delaying what you want, Cohen adds. You can always return an
item if you find it for less and try to get the store to price match
- as long as you have your receipt.
And just wait until you see next year's sales.
"Retailers will figure this out," says Cohen. And then Thanksgiving
week will be even more about self-gifting, "and then there will be
another set of doorbusters for later in December."
(Editing by Lauren Young and Frances Kerry)
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