Holiday Business 2011

The holiday season is upon us and we thought it would be interesting to provide you with a quick holiday business forecast. For a thorough overview please see our original winter holiday story Black Friday - Red Christmas, as well as our annual piece on Black Friday. As the Great Recession continues to take its toll on the economy, consumers are faced with tough decisions on how much they are willing and able to spend this holiday season. Deloitte has put out their 2011 Holiday survey and data shows that consumers are increasingly concerned about the state of the economy.

Deloitte's survey concluded that 55% of Canadians planned to spend the same amount this holiday season as they did last year, 40% planned on spending less, while only 5% planned on spending more.

Overall the retail sector should produce very modest growth during December. Colliers Canada has estimated 2010-11 Canada-wide retail sales growth to be at 3.6%, down from 5.9% in 2009-10. This estimate is mirrored by the Deloitte holiday outlook which also predicts very modest growth in the retail sector. 

In regards to consumer expenditure an RBC survey provides a slightly more optimistic view. RBC predicts Canadians will be spending an average of $640 on gifts this year, which is a modest increase over the $624 that was spent during the last holiday season. Additionally, RBC found that Canadian consumers were planning on increasing their budgets for other holiday items (entertainment, decorations, etc.) to $612 this year, up from last year's average of $512.