As far as retailers are concerned, the holidays are here and the horizon looks very bleak. With credit tightened and shoppers either strapped for cash or holding on to it for dear life, the economy is going to hit some retailers hard. There are few ways around it.
Kmart, however may have found a way — layaway. Most retailers have done away with layaway, but Kmart is marketing this as a way to not only get the toys you want reserved early, but a way to manage the pinch of a tighter holiday budget.
RetailWire features a lively discussion on the resurgence of layaway. Could this be the only way around our current economic conditions? How else can retailers get scared shoppers into the stores?
2 Comments
Martin,
I, too, am curious as to how brick & mortar retailers will bring in customers. Do I think the revival of the layway will do it? Hardly. There is a full generation (nay, two even) of retail shoppers that have not the faintest idea of this concept. In this day and age of “gotta have it NOW”, access to credit cards and internet commerce, it’s unlikely to have a significant impact. Additionally, would retailers willingly chew up valuable non-salesfloor square footage to store merchandise and subject themselves to the extra recordkeeping that involves layaway?
Retailers are going to have to go further back to basics to get and retain their customers: CUSTOMER SERVICE. If shoppers won’t get this then it won’t matter how sexy the displays and pricing are in the stores.
Bill,
You make some great points. But many of those “gotta have it NOW” shoppers don’t have a choice. Because of the credit crunch many people are seeing their spending limits lowered at the descretion of the creditor. And without shoppers retailers are having to make the hard choices that you describe.
Mary Pilon at WSJ thinks that layaway may be the “New Credit Card”…at least in the meantime. Check out what she has to say at the link below.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2008/10/22/layaway-the-new-credit-card/trackback/