take KARE of your MONEY: Buy now for Christmas or wait?

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It is the question of the season every October. Should would-be Santa's buy now for Christmas or wait for, hopefully, better deals? At the Best Buy store in Mall of America, teenager Quinn Martin said he was joining the platoon of procrastinators.

"I think I'd wait. Probably another two or three months, this (a "DJ Hero" game he was sampling) will be pretty cheap around Christmas."

Fellow teen Daryl Dierzkens disagreed. "'I'd be shopping right now. I mean, by the time Christmastime rolls around, this place is gonna be crazy."

The teens can dream of being DJ Heros, but they want to be heroic shoppers as well. The dilemma is clear to store manager Brandon Bowen. "One of the things we hear pretty regularly from our consumers is whether they should wait or not. It is usually not about inventory. It is generally from a pricing standpoint. Are the deals going to get better during the Holiday season versus today?"

Stores like Target and Best Buy made the decisions for what to offer for stuffing Christmas stockings when Halloween store displays were months into the future. David Brennan, University of St. Thomas Professor of Marketing at the Opus College of Business, "toyed" with the danger of delaying. "One of the big stories is going to be that retailers got stung and stung badly by having so much inventory last year. This year they've reduced their inventory much more in line with lower anticipated sales."

What does that mean for bewildered consumers? "If it's in the toy area, I think, you could certainly buy now. I think you're not going to get much better prices from either Wal-Mart, Toys R Us or Target. On the other hand, if it is things like apparel, if it is things like jewelry, I think you can wait some time," said Brennan. 

Brennan thinks apparel will do well this season, however, he thinks retailers will be forced to go with "deeper promotional discounts" on clothes closer to Christmas. He doubts that larger ticket, non-traditional gift items, such as furniture, will do well this season. In electronics, Brennan believes price cuts on large, flat screen TV's will help sales. He does not feel that optimism for Blu-Ray decks and discs. "People are moving away from that kind of technology and really much more into Movie on Demand and Netflix and similar types of things."

The New York Times has a somewhat pessimistic outlook on the Holiday sales season.  The National Retail Federation also sees a drop in Christmas sales in 2009.  However, the International Council of Shopping Centers sees a slight increase in sales.

Brennan admits to being cautiously optimistic about the impact of a recession recovery on holiday sales. "I think if you look at what is happening with the consumer over the last 12 months in particular. Last fall, in particular, we had the financial meltdown which also meant that people froze up and were not buying. The retailers came back and, as a result of that, they had huge discounts. They had to liquidate their inventory. We are not in that situation now, but what the consumer has done, things have gotten a little bit better. The stock market has come back, for those that are invested in the stock market. The housing prices have come back some which is another feeling that we're moving in the right direction...what it has done, it has moved them (consumers) where they are beginning to feel more comfortable and not so fearish and uncertain as they once were."

It seems that waiting for a better deal on an exact item someone wants to give or get will be the usual Yuletide gamble.  Rob Ruitten, Target store manager at Ridgedale, put it this way: "Every year there's going to be a hot item, that's going to go quickly. We have yet to see what item that is this year."

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