Jewelry Trends in Holiday Shopping Season
By www.jewellerynetasia.com
The holiday shopping season doesn’t officially begin until Friday but for all practical purposes it has already begun. This leads us to the first holiday trend for the 2011 season.
Holiday sales have begun. Retailers in their attempt to make the season profitable have starting announcing holiday sales as early as October. Most consumers I talk to are bemused and even a bit angered by this development but the retail industry as a whole is excited. We’ll see how this works out when the sales figures come in.
E-commerce to take a larger piece of retail sales. The dramatic growth of e-commerce is well known and online retailers are determined to take advantage of this growth. More than half of online retailers will offer promotions specifically on Thanksgiving Day and nearly 80 percent will have special promotions on Cyber Monday, according to a survey by Shop.org, an online retail trade association. In addition, 92.2 percent of online merchants will offer special promotions at some point during the Thanksgiving weekend. CyberMonday is a term coined by Shop.org to take advantage of people who tend to shop online after black Friday (this year on November 25).
M-commerce’s breakout year. Sales on mobile devices are growing as fast, or even faster, than online sales. This holiday season will be the first to experience the impact of this type of buying. More than half of those who own a smartphone said they will use their device to research products, redeem coupons, use apps to assist in their purchase, and purchase holiday gifts and items, according to a survey by the National retail Federation. Tablet owners are even more likely to use their device to aid in their holiday shopping. More than 70 percent of tablet owners will research and shop using their device.
Shopping at work. “Holiday shoppers who find time is not on their side often shop online over their lunch hours at work or at the end of the business day”, according to Shop.org. That’s a nice way of putting it. What the organization doesn’t want to say is that workers will shop while they are supposed to be working. According to the survey, 58.4 percent of workers with Internet access, or 75.9 million people, will shop for holiday gifts from the office this year.
Now that we know consumers are shopping differently and retailers are selling differently, what type of jewellery will they be buying?
Colour. The trend toward lots of colour through the use of gemstones and metals is sure to be a hit this holiday season. Particularly popular, according to the Jewellery Information Center are opals. Coloured gold and less expensive coloured diamonds, including black diamonds are being used much more frequently in creative designs.
Value. Thanks to digital platforms people are shopping at more outlets. Thanks to the recent downgrade in the economy, people have become much more frugal shoppers. They are looking for quality materials and good design. Consumers are also in search of more classical looks that can go with many clothing combinations and will have long-lasting appeal. Silver, palladium and other metals are replacing gold as the metal of choice for consumers with a budget.
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