Shoppers To Be Tempted With Reduced Price HDTVs And Bundled Blu-rays

Greatly reduced HDTV price tags and packages bundling sets and blu-rays are among the retailing treats likely to be on offer to US shoppers this holiday season, according to DisplaySearch.

With the US economy ailing, Paul Gagnon, DisplaySearch’s director of North America TV market research, said stock market declines have impacted on people’s investments and consumers weren’t generally saving very much money.

Paul Gagnon, director of N.American TV market research,DisplaySearch

He said this could impact on their purchasing decisions during the Thanksgiving weekend and Black Friday holiday period, traditionally one of the busiest weeks of the year for the US CE and PC industries.

“It’s an interesting time we’re in now," he said. “To combat this, retailers are expected to pull out all the stops this holiday season—lowering HDTV prices, offering bundled electronic packages with HDTVs and Blu-ray disc players, using ‘creative’ financing deals when possible such as in-store credit or ‘pay when you get your tax return’ options with the hopes of achieving their sales targets this holiday season.

"Keeping shopper traffic high for the holiday season will be a priority for both retailers and TV manufacturers.”

Speaking in a webinar exclusively for DisplaySearch clients, Gagnon detailed several potential TV scenarios for the 2008 holiday season:

•   Consumers will become increasingly conservative in discretionary holiday spending, despite discount and promotion opportunities—leading to negative Y/Y Q4’08 shipment growth.

• Consumers will take advantage of the best bargains and low price points—causing retailers to hit their unit sales targets, but miss revenue goals and negatively impact margins.

• Consumers will continue to spend as they have on larger sizes and better featured sets—taking advantage of dramatically lower prices and sggressive retail promotions.

• Consumers will turn to discount stores such as Costco and Walmart in greater numbers for electronic purchases this holiday season, in order to save money and get more shopping done in fewer trips.