Washington, April 7, 2011 – Not since 1943 have Americans seen an Easter fall this late in the calendar, but it seems the delayed holiday won’t impact consumers’ eagerness to spend on décor, food and even new spring apparel. According to NRF’s 2011 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average consumer is expected to spend $131.04 on everything from candy to clothes – up from last year’s $118.60 but not quite to pre-recession levels. Total spending on Easter related merchandise is expected to reach $14.6 billion.*

“Due to such a late holiday, Easter promotions will last all spring long,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “Though lingering concerns over food and energy prices may keep shoppers from splurging, retailers are expecting consumers to stock up on apparel, home décor and of course food and candy, a good sign leading into the much busier and important months to come.”

Food and candy will account for most of a consumer’s budget, bringing in $2.1 billion in candy sales and $4.5 billion in food sales alone. The average person will spend slightly more on each than they did last year – $18.55 on candy, compared to $17.29 last year, and $40.05 on food, up from $37.45 last year.

Many Americans will take advantage of retailers’ spring sales to buy new clothing for the entire family. The average celebrant will spend $21.51 on colorful new apparel, up from last year’s $19.03 and totaling $2.4 billion in sales. Additionally, consumers will spend an average of $9.02 on flowers, $8.00 on decorations and $6.79 on greeting cards. Children looking forward to a visit from the Easter bunny this year are in for a treat: spending on gifts will reach an average of $19.89, totaling $2.2 billion.

Department (36.6%) and discount stores (62.6%) will be the most popular shopping destinations for Easter gifts this year, though specialty stores carrying flowers, jewelry and electronic merchandise will also see their share of traffic (22.4%). Others will shop at specialty clothing stores (8.1%), online (14.8%) and through a catalog (3.5%).

“When out shopping for their Easter meals, many Americans will also be swayed by other items that remind them of warm weather celebrations, including apparel and home and garden accents,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch. “While spending is expected to improve from the past two years, families are still sticking to a budget with an eagle eye on low prices.”

The survey also found that Easter’s biggest spenders will be 25-34 year-olds ($173.41 vs. $136.79 last year) and young adults 18-24 ($145.12 vs. $125.85). Thirty-five to 44 year olds will spend an average of $138.55, followed by 45-54 year olds ($122.15) and 55-64 year olds ($113.32).

About the Survey
The NRF 2011 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted for NRF by BIGresearch, was designed to gauge consumer behavior and shopping trends related to Easter spending. The poll of 8,491 consumers was conducted from March 1-8, 2011. The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percent.

BIGresearch® consumer intelligence provides analysis of behavior in areas of products and services, retail, financial services, automotive and media. The BIGresearch Consumer Intentions and Actions® Survey (CIA™) of 8,000+ respondents is conducted monthly and the Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey (SIMM®) of 15,000+ respondents is conducted semi-annually.

As the world’s largest retail trade association and the voice of retail worldwide, the National Retail Federation’s global membership includes retailers of all sizes, formats and channels of distribution as well as chain restaurants and industry partners from the U.S. and more than 45 countries abroad. In the U.S., NRF represents the breadth and diversity of an industry with more than 1.6 million American companies that employ nearly 25 million workers and generated 2010 sales of $2.4 trillion. www.nrf.com

Consumers intend to spend $17.6B on Valentine’s Day gifts

Don’t forget a romantic dinner – 70 million people to dine out

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb 06, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Making this Valentine’s special for your sweetheart is a cinch this year, and doesn’t have to break your budget. Winn-Dixie WINN 0.00% is using its culinary expertise to offer lovers a restaurant-quality make-at-home Surf & Turf meal, and is throwing in the chef for free.

Using Quick Response (QR) codes and a special website ( www.winn-dixie.com/GiveLove ) scheduled to launch Feb. 8, novice cooks and foodies alike can invite Winn-Dixie’s executive chef into their kitchens to provide simple to follow step-by-step instructions for preparing the “Valentine’s Surf & Turf Meal,” complete with two steaks, two lobster tails, two baking potatoes, asparagus and six chocolate-covered strawberries. All of the components of the “Surf & Turf” meal are together in the special “What’s for Dinner” display case.

 Complete the affordable at-home memory-making moment with a dozen Passion Growers long-stemmed roses available exclusively at Winn-Dixie. These beautiful blooms are guaranteed to last seven days, and at only $24.99 — a fraction of a traditional florists’ inflated prices — showering your sweetie with fragrant flowers doesn’t have to be a thorn in the side.

“Couples can skip the reservations and spare the over-priced arrangements by celebrating a romantic evening at home this Valentine’s,” said Mary Kellmanson, marketing group vice president for Winn-Dixie. “We are taking the stress and financial strain out of Valentine’s by offering guests a quick one-stop shop for everything needed to give love, including a wide selection of boxed gourmet chocolates, cards and wines.”

Once again this year, Winn-Dixie will open its convenient “Lover’s Lane” express checkout beginning Sunday, Feb. 12, through Valentine’s Day. Whether the hurried husband grabbing a last-minute card for his wife, or a mom picking up cupcakes from the Winn-Dixie bakery for her kid’s class on the way to school, guests purchasing Valentine’s related product can get in and get out quick, bypassing the standard lanes.

Besides the “Valentine’s Surf & Turf Meal” and the dozen long-stemmed roses for $24.99, Winn-Dixie is featuring an array of Valentine’s products and services, including:

– Bonus fuelperks! Rewards on all children’s Valentine cards Feb. 1 — 14 and triple fuelperks! on gift card purchases ($5 off $50 gift card purchases in areas that do not yet have fuelperks!)

– Customization stations inviting guests to put a personal touch to a message cookie or 5-inch cake on Feb. 13 and 14 (see stores for details)

– Specials on flowering plants and mixed bouquets, and many different balloon styles starting at $7.99

– On-site flower and gift wrapping, and personal floral design services.

The National Retail Federation predicts the average person will spend $120.03 on Valentine’s Day this year, up 8.3 percent over last year. Total holiday spending is predicted to be $19.6 billion, with nearly 80 percent of Valentine’s Day purchases being made in the week before the holiday, which is on a Tuesday this year.

About Winn-Dixie

Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., is one of the nation’s largest food retailers. Founded in 1925, the Company is headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla. The Company currently operates approximately 480 retail grocery locations and approximately 380 in-store pharmacies in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi. For more information, please visit www.winn-dixie.com .

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50157738&lang=en

SOURCE: Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.

What about us girls though? There’s no easy gift to give to men on Valentine’s Day!

Foxnews.com put together a list of the worst gifts to get the man in your life, with the top 10 including: Socks, cologne, a book that is meant to improve your relationship, sports-related gifts that are not from his favourite team, novelty underwear, bath products, tickets to something you want to see, homemade certificates, cleaning supplies and grooming products that imply “improve yourself”.

After ruling out these terrible gifts, what Valentines Day gifts should you buy? The team at Universal Gift Cards has the answer for you…give him a Universal Gift Card, a prepaid Visa gift card that can be used at over 25 million stores worldwide and online.

He can shop at his favourite department store, restaurant, sports store, hardware store… anywhere he wants, buying anything he likes.

Provisions of New Jersey’s gift card law may be unconstitutional, the Third Circuit recently ruled, affirming a temporary injunction against the retroactive application of certain parts of the law.

• USA
• February 1 2012

In 2010, the state passed a law that, for the first time, provided for the escheat of gift cards to the state. The law covers both “open loop” cards that may be used at several retailers as well as “closed loop” cards, which may be redeemed only for merchandise or services from the specific retailer that issued the card.

In two separate suits, interested parties challenged the law, arguing that it violated the Contract Clause (Article 1 of the Constitution) and was preempted by federal law.

Analyzing the closed loop cards in a suit brought by a group of New Jersey retailers, the Third Circuit agreed.

The law imposes a “substantial impairment” on the contractual relationship between issuers and consumers when applied retroactively, the court said.

Issuers anticipated realizing an expected profit or merchant fee, but the law mandates that after two years of nonuse, they must turn over the entire value of the card – in cash – to state custody.

The state could have posed a lesser burden by requiring issuers to remit only a percentage of the value of the abandoned gift card as some states have done, but chose a course of action that precluded issuers from collecting their bargained-for expected profits or merchant fees.

Therefore, the retroactive application of the escheat law violated the Contract Clause and should be enjoined, the court said.

The panel also determined that federal common law preempts the law’s “place of purchase” presumption, which substitutes the address of the place of purchase in instances where the address of the purchaser is unknown.

Under federal common law, unclaimed property must first escheat to the state of the last known address of the creditor, the court said, which conflicts with the New Jersey law. Additionally, as New Jersey lacks a clear connection to the owner or issuer of a gift card, the state does not have a sufficient connection with the parties involved in a transaction to claim a right to escheat the abandoned property, and the Court blocked enforcement of this provision as well.

The second suit challenged the new three-year escheat law. In this suit, the three-judge panel declined to accept the arguments as applied to open-loop cards, as the challenger did not suffer a substantial impairment of its contractual relationships because its product could always be redeemed for cash. It merely had the right to use the money until called for by the user or some other person duly authorized – in this case, the state.

To read the decision in New Jersey Retail Merchants Association v. Sidamon-Eristoff, click here.

Why it matters: The decision is a victory for gift card issuers, at least with respect to retroactive application. The case will now head back to the U.S. District Court for further proceedings. Issuers should be aware that the court’s ruling addresses the issue of an injunction, and the actual question of the law’s constitutionality and enforceability must still be decided.

Created 12/22/2011 – 11:21am

By Craig Johnson, Customer Growth Partners

Despite being only the penultimate Saturday before Christmas, 2011’s “Super Saturday” Dec. 17 broke the all-time record for holiday spending, with an estimated $26 billion in total retail sales, according to retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. The total was just shy of the record $27 billion spent on Black Friday.

This year’s Super Saturday spending broke the old record of $25 billion, set in 2007, when the last Saturday was an ideal three days before Christmas. [CGP based its estimate on its in-store field research of the nation’s 35 leading retailers. The company conducts this research in 40 major mall and off-mall venues nationally during the Black Friday weekend and continuing through the peak Holiday season.]

CGP’s analysis of holiday spending has found that consumer spending per capita has finally topped pre-recession 2007 demand levels. Based on government November retail data, and its proprietary retailer database, CGP found that average spending per adult will total $2,330 for the November-December holiday period, up from $2,212 in 2010 and topping the record $2,223 set in 2007.

Despite the Recession’s rigors, American consumers are far more resilient than the experts, and since 2009 they’ve deleveraged sharply, rebalancing their household finances—if they’re among the 91% with jobs. After completing this ‘Great Reset’ in their saving and spending patterns, consumers have resumed the historic 4% to 5% spending growth we saw earlier in the 2000’s.

But unlike the mid-2000’s, consumers are spending without cranking up their credit cards or tapping housing bubble-inflated home equity. Instead, they are spending smartly, and out of current cash flow—a much healthier foundation for sound, sustained growth.

Based on analysis of Dept of Labor data, CGP estimates 2011 Holiday spending per adult, for roughly the top, middle and lower third of households by income as follows:

• > $70K Household Income: $3134/adult
• $30-70K HHI: $1992
• < $30K HHI: $1698.

Unlike retail’s high-growth years of the past decade, holiday spending this year has not been led by the consumer electronics and home improvement sectors, still mired in their own secular slumps. Instead, 2011’s retail rebound is being led by traditional “old” retail—including department stores, toys, and apparel—including the first real return of excitement and newness in fashion since before the recession.

Over the past couple years we have seen one of the great turnarounds in memory in the department store sector—led by two of the grand old names in the sector, Macy’s and Nordstrom, each founded over a century ago. Both have reinvented themselves since the recession, and have made themselves relevant to a new generation of shoppers—and they are each hitting the ball out of the park.

For the holiday season as a whole, CGP preseason forecast of +6.5% growth from 2010 remains on track, about double the consensus forecast of 2.5-3.0%. Although it is notable that other forecasters are belatedly raising their estimates, for example, the National Retail Federation from 2.8% to 3.8%. CGP is believed to have the most accurate Holiday sales forecasting record of any of the ten major retail forecasting organizations.

November retail sales (excluding auto/gasoline/restaurants), which represents about 45% of total Holiday sales, was up 5.7% year-over –year, consistent with CGP’s full season forecast, and reflecting the deferral of cold-weather apparel sales into December due to the warm November. The forecast 6.5% growth represents the strongest year-over-year holiday growth since 2004, and will yield $554B in total Retail sales, topping the total sales record of $521B of 2010.

The real surprise this year may be the day after Christmas. England calls it ‘Boxing Day’, but it will be a boffo day for American retailers, since the 26th is a Monday, with most offices closed for the three day weekend. Shoppers will still be looking for ‘self-gifting’ bargains, but armed with gift cards, consumers are much more likely to pay full price for the new merchandise that smart retailers will put on the floor for the post-Christmas crowds.

Last year, the middle Atlantic and Northeast was hit by a huge post-Christmas snowstorm, wiping out December 26 sales for over 15% of the country, and holding total sales that day to barely $20B nationally.

This year, we think a lot of stores may stay open until Midnight with extended hours, December 26th, may even top Black Friday, with $29 billion in gross sales—although returns for cash will need to be netted against the total. But after the kinds of crowds we’re seeing at the malls, with parking lots often at 110% of capacity, the key post-Christmas week is a true ‘second season’ that will propel the full holiday shopping season to a new all-time record.

Craig Johnson is president of Customer Growth Partners in New Canaan, Conn., a consulting and research firm serving the retail and other consumer industries. Founded in 2001, CGP has conducted both proprietary and public forecasts of holiday retail sales annually since then.

Source URL: http://chainstoreage.com/article/%E2%80%9Csuper-saturday%E2%80%9D-spending-breaks-record

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This law affects all sales of gift cards in and to the state of the New Jersey.  This includes online sales of your own gift cards, gift card sold through 3rd party online sites, 3rd party gift card malls, b2b and your own in-store gift card sales.

The Retail Gift Card Association provides support to its members to understand this and other laws that affect gift cards.  For more information, please contact::  Rebekka Rea, Executive Director  rebekkar@theRGCA.org  or 405-630-6806

The Retail Gift Card Association is a member organization of diverse, closed loop gift card retailers with a commitment to promote and protect the use of gift cards. Our members follow a code of principles which promote best practices and standards to help the industry grow and shape in ways that benefit both members and consumers.

Plastic Jungle brings liquidity to the secondary gift card market by allowing people to sell gift cards for up to 92% of the gift card value or buy gift cards at their favorite brands for up to 35% off. Plastic Jungle will use the investment from Citi Ventures to continue its work to unlock an estimated $41 billion in unredeemed gift cards trapped in the economy for the benefit of consumers and retailers alike.

“Demand for innovation in the secondary gift card market has heightened over the past two years; our marketplace has experienced tremendous growth as a result of increased consumer awareness, and we’ve consistently delivered original payment applications that bring value to both our customers and retail partners,” said Bruce Bower, CEO of Plastic Jungle. “Our interests line up with many of Citi’s interests, and this funding gives us an excellent opportunity to accelerate our growth and continued innovation.”

With a team comprised of former eBay, Apple, Gap, Wells Fargo, Schwab, Visa, GE, Boku and Blackhawk executives, Plastic Jungle exchanged hundreds of thousands of gift cards and tens of millions of gift card value across 400 brands in 2011, making it the largest marketplace to buy, sell and donate unredeemed gift cards.

Bruce added, “As the largest and most efficient gift card exchange, we continue to prove that the Plastic Jungle team is second to none when it comes to understanding and evolving the gift card market.”

“Plastic Jungle has established itself as a leader in the payments exchange space,” said Chris Kay, Managing Director and Head of Ventures for Citi Ventures. “Their team is focused on providing a flexible and efficient consumer experience, increasing consumer choice and driving new value from existing currencies. We are happy to help them expand and explore new paths for payments.”

About Plastic Jungle Plastic Jungle ( www.plasticjungle.com ) is the web’s largest secured gift card exchange, giving consumers the choice and flexibility to convert their gift cards into other forms of spending power — including online balances to use at the millions of merchants that accept PayPal; Amazon.com Gift Cards; and a variety of other payment formats. Plastic Jungle’s patent-pending marketplace and payment applications aim to safely unlock an estimated $41 billion in unredeemed gift cards trapped in the economy for the benefit of consumers and merchants alike. Based in San Jose, California, the company is privately held, with venture backing from Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures, First Round Capital, Bay Partners, Harrison Metal and Western Technology Investment.

About Citi Ventures Headquartered in Palo Alto with offices in New York, Shanghai and Singapore, Citi Ventures ( http://ventures.citi.com ) is a unit of global financial services company Citigroup. The Citi Ventures team partners with Citi businesses internally and with leading companies externally to identify, develop, and commercialize the highest new growth opportunities around the world that directly support Citi’s emerging strategic directions.

About Citi Citi, the leading global financial services company, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://new.citi.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi