Retailers Checking Out as Economy Falters

Biz approach to females: take 'a male product and paint it pink'

(NEWSER) - Women who shop til they drop are stimulating the economy more than any Ben Bernanke, but the planet's greatest spending bloc feels dissed by retailers and service providers. Women control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending in the world—a figure likely to climb to $28 trillion by 2014. Despite the financial crisis, domestic spending in China in the first nine months of this year was up 15%, driven largely by women under 35. More»

Recession isn't over as far as consumers are concerned

(NEWSER) - If the recession is indeed waning, nobody told consumers. Retailers of every kind reported lousy sales for the quarter ended Aug. 1, the Wall Street Journal reports. Target’s same-store sales fell 6.2%, Home Depot’s dropped 9.1% and Saks’ plummeted a whopping 15.5%. And with unemployment, stagnant wages, and tight credit squeezing shoppers, executives don’t expect to see improvement until next spring. More»

(NEWSER) - A fundamental shift is going on in the consumer product world as retailers decide that less is more, the Wall Street Journal reports. Big national retailers are expected to slash selection by at least 15%, analysts say. Gone will be 30% of Kroger’s cereals, 20 of the 24 tape measures Wal-Mart sells, and so on. It’s a big curveball for manufacturers accustomed to cranking out variations on their top products. More»

(NEWSER) - Overpaid maestros had better accept slimmer paychecks before America's great orchestras sink into silence, John von Rhein writes in the Chicago Tribune. With the Great Recession raging and musicians accepting pay cuts, big-name conductors like Lorin Maazel and James Levine still rake in millions. Welcome to "the dirty little secret in the classical music world," writes von Rhein. More»

Savings rate jumps over job, portfolio fears

(NEWSER) - Even after the economy rebounds, the US will likely remain a nation of penny pinchers—and that has economists worried, the New York Times reports. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the country’s GDP, but Americans, fretting over job security and losses in the housing and stock sectors, are squirreling away more of their after-tax income in unprecedented fashion. More»