Attitudes: Retailers

Retailers who release monthly sales next Thursday will offer fresh insight and hard numbers on back-to-school shoppers’ early season spending behavior and that’s a good thing because so far opinions offered by forecasters are all over the place.

Back in early July, Customer Growth Partners said seasonal sales would grow by 6.2% to $467 billion, the most since 2006, despite economic headwinds.

Chain Store Age is conducting a brief survey designed to take retailers' "new" media temperature. Together with shopping center owner Forest City Enterprises and research firm Alexander Babbage, Chain Store Age is surveying our retail readership to find out what retailers nationwide are doing in terms of social, mobile and other digital media initiatives.

Washington, D.C. -- A Tuesday report by Bloomberg said that consumer confidence in the United States took an unexpected upward turn in July, from an eight-month low.

Results were led by a rebound in jobs’ outlook over the next six months.

The Conference Board’s index climbed to 59.5 from a revised 57.6 reading in June that was lower than previously estimated, according to Bloomberg research. Economists predicted the July gauge would fall to 56, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

New York City -- Chain Store Age is conducting a brief survey designed to take retailers’ “new” media temperature. Together with shopping center owner Forest City Enterprises and research firm Alexander Babbage, Chain Store Age is surveying our retail readership to find out what retailers nationwide are doing in terms of social, mobile and other digital media initiatives.

If consumers can be trusted to accurately describe their spending intentions well in advance of when they actually incur expenses then this year’s back-to-school season will be weaker than last year’s. The National Retail Federation’s annual BTS survey got a lot of attention when it was released last week because consumer data compiled by the trade group forecast a decline in spending.

NEW YORK— Target, Kohl's and JCPenney ranked highest among discounters in consumer perception in the first half of 2011, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The company interviews 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample, more than 1.2 million interviews per year.

Here is YouGov’s Retail Buzz scores for discounters in the first half of 2011:

1.  Target (33.9) 

2. Kohl's (29.5) 

3. J.C. Penney (23.9) 

New York City -- While the majority of global consumers still perceive store brands to be the same as or better than national brands, a one year trend analysis indicates that their positive perceptions toward store brands may be starting to decline slightly. This is the latest finding from a study conducted by Ipsos Marketing, Consumer Goods.

North Plainfield, N.J. -- Results of a survey released Tuesday by shopping center owner Levin Management Corp. showed that, while store sales remain relatively flat, the majority of its retail tenants are optimistic about the balance of 2011.

NEW YORK — Global consumer confidence cautiously edged up one index point to 93 in the second quarter as confidence increases in booming Asian markets were offset by European consumers’ growing concerns of an escalating debt crisis, which battered confidence levels in Spain, Italy and France, according to the latest edition of the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index. Consumer confidence rose two points in the U.S. in Q2 to 87.

Chemsford, Mass. -- Fewer people applied for jobs in the retail sector in June, according to the July Kronos Retail Labor Index.  The July report includes data for June 2011.

The number of applications received by retailers in the Kronos sample fell sharply in June 2011, to just 900,164 from a revised 1,149,879 in May, all on a seasonally adjusted basis. This was the lowest number of applications received since November 2007 and nearly 17%  below its level one year ago.