Still, in the past few weeks I have visited with small groups of shoppers in California, Phoenix, Dallas, New Orleans, northern Pennsylvania, and finally New York City; I found a consensus of hope as the holiday season approaches, and a feeling of thanks at having survived another tough year.

American consumers have grown tired of continuing signs of economic uncertainty. My conversations with American shoppers, as well as earlier consumer research by Booz & Company, indicated several changes that will set the stage for a holiday season that’s focused on affordability:

1. In almost all of our conversations we asked the following question “What will be different about this holiday season over past seasons?”  The overwhelming response was bringing together family and friends to celebrate.

Expect holiday gift giving to be less impulsive and more personal and meaningful.  Almost all of the people we talked with plan to spend about the same as last year ($675 – $725 per family), but this season the gifts will be much more based on “needs versus wants.”  Several families I talked with have decided to purchase family gifts, from home entertainment (3D movies) and movie tickets to cooking tools, including waffle makers, coffee makers and popcorn machines. Others spoke of the new seasonal wardrobe and special luxury gifts for mom and dad. Retailers would do well to capture the emphasis on family and togetherness as they adjust their market strategies.

2. Nearly 65 percent of people are struggling to find the finances to enjoy the holiday season as they would like to, and my conversations with consumers reflected a growing thoughtfulness and concern for those who do not have as much as they would like for the holidays. This spirit of caring indicates a 2012 season that will be far more focused on the emotions of the holidays as opposed to materiality and luxe gift-giving. One sign of this “move away from more”: This year 32 percent of shoppers said they were considering giving an as-yet unused gift to someone else this season.

Retailers must be cognizant of consumers’ financial struggles and attitude shift toward the holidays this year. There are many consumers for whom small items are luxuries, and retailers need to be as attentive to these shoppers as they are to those with more to spend. Those stores that clearly position themselves as offering value and a range of lower-cost products should find more shoppers making purchases.

3. The search for great deals will drive consumer purchase behavior. Seventy-three percent of all shoppers expect to find them this holiday season—an 18 percent increase over 2011. Consumers are also looking earlier and buying later, and going online more to browse and buy. As a result, retailers are discounting even earlier, seeking to convert these early shoppers. As always, some will leave making purchases until the last minute; we estimate that some 25 million shoppers will hit the stores on Christmas Eve, a 9 percent increase over last year, anticipating even better last-minute deals.

This deal hunt is driving an increase in “showrooming”: checking things out in-store before purchasing from an online competitor.  Forty percent of consumers now describe showrooming as their shopping strategy.  Retailers hoping to capture more in-store sales should feature signage and product descriptions (especially for electronics) that highlight the unique features that make their models different from what consumers could buy online. Bundling complementary items together is also a smart strategy; for example, an electronics retailer can combine sale of a DVD player with an offer for consumers to free movies of their choice.

Even though nearly everyone has gone through difficult economic times, spending is in the air, to a degree. The 2012 holiday season is predicted to see a spending increase of three to four percent over last year’s sales of $471.5 billion.  The emphasis from shoppers, and an opportunity for retailers, is to attain a little extra joy this holiday shopping season.

PHOTO: Shoppers browse at the Union Square Holiday Market as the busy holiday shopping season begins in New York, November 18, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Christie’s auction in Geneva on Tuesday claims to have set a world record price for a bottle of red Burgundy. A  U.S. buyer bought the 750 ml bottle of 1945 Romainee-Conti for $123,889.  But the house failed to sell its showcase lot of the auction — 315 bottles representing every vintage from ’45 to ’07 produced by each of the first five growths of Bordeaux.

Meanwhile in New York on Saturday, the star lot – a complete vertical of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild spanning ’45-’07 sold to an Asian collector for $150,000.

Saturday’s lot is selling for between $100,000 and $150,000, while Tuesday’s is estimated to sell for $696,000 to $929,000. And the price difference presents collectors with an arbitrage opportunity.

Assuming that the wines sell at the upper end of their estimates, buying Saturday’s lot for $150,000 would represent a $35,000 savings.  Granted, Tuesday’s lot has one more bottle of Mouton-Rothschild – the chateau produced two labels in 1978 and 1993 – and the Geneva lot has all four, while Saturday’s lot only has three.

And unlike Tuesday’s anonymous French collector,  Saturday’s is  California attorney Allen Grossman, who has been collecting for 40 years and waxes poetic about Mouton-Rothschild, saying of the top Bordeaux, “I have tasted them all many times. They are all wonderful wines, but I’m  just partial to the Mouton.”

$1=0.8608 CHF

In her bilingual documentary film “Masa Revolution”, veteran Los Angeles journalist Patricia Nazario maps the food truck industry back to the 1960s, when blue-collar entrepreneurs served plastic-wrapped sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee to factory and office workers across Southern California.

Those food truck operators pulled down around five times more money than the blue-collar workers they fed and guarded their lucrative routes like Fort Knox.

“It was a cutthroat business,” said Nazario. “Catering truck operators were very protective of their routes and would pull out knives or guns to ward off the competition.”

Her film also chronicles how recent immigrants, largely Mexican, steered clear of the rough-and-tumble business model favored by their predecessors. Instead, they parked their taco trucks, or loncheros, in Hispanic neighborhoods.

Some of those restaurants-on-wheels have been using the same spot for more than 20 years and have become part of the fabric of the communities they serve, she said.

“I’m as enthralled with the hair-raising tales of old-school route drivers as I am with how social media is driving the gourmet food truck revolution among hipsters across the country,” Nazario said.

Los Angeles is in the vanguard of the food truck movement, which has fueled contentious battles between established restaurants and the gourmet trucks that park nearby.

“We get to the bottom of a modern day ‘David-and-Goliath’ struggle,” said Nazario, who has self-funded the project and is looking for financial help to get it through post production.

(Photo courtesy of Masa Revolution)

The terminated workers are members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a formerly high-profile union better known as the Wobblies, and said they were fired after they put up 3,000 posters (shown here) around Minneapolis as part of a campaign to win paid sick days.

Michael Mulligan, president of MikLin Enterprises Inc, which operates the affected Jimmy John’s restaurants, told Reuters that the terminated union workers “crossed well over the line of protected activity” with their latest appeal.

“The posters dishonestly state that Jimmy John’s workers are forced to work while sick and suggest that the health of customers is at risk when eating at our restaurants,” said Mulligan, who characterized the IWW as anti-capitalist, anarchist and socialist.

“These posters are false and misleading at best, and in the view of our company, they are defamatory, disparaging and dishonest,” added Mulligan, who said that his business has operated for a decade and served 6 million sandwiches without getting diners sick.

Most fast-food restaurant workers receive low wages and get little in the way of benefits such as health insurance. Paid sick days are a rarity in the industry, which is known for squeezing out costs in order to offer low-priced fare. One exception is San Francisco, which in 2007 became the first U.S. city to require employers to give workers paid sick leave.

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a restaurant workers organization, in October released a study showing that  nearly 88 percent of workers reported not receiving paid sick days and that more than 63 percent of all restaurant workers admitted to cooking and serving food while sick.

Mulligan said Jimmy John’s employees are not allowed to work if they are having flu-like symptoms. Those employees are expected to find someone to cover their shift if they are sick and may be subject to disciplinary action if they do not.

“Since they pay us around minimum wage, most of us can’t afford to take a day off to get well,” said David Boehnke, one of the fired  sandwich-makers at the chain, whose mottos include “Subs so fast you’ll freak.”

“This is a public health issue. Jimmy John’s needs to do the right thing,” Boehnke said.

Erik Forman, another terminated worker, called the firings ”an attempt to destroy the union.”

“Speaking out against the policy of forcing workers to work while sick is not only our right, it is our duty,“ said Forman. ”We will speak out until they realize that no one wants to eat a sandwich filled with cold and flu germs.”

Where do you fall? Does the fast-food industry’s sick-day policy make you freak? Did the union members cross the line?

Here is a map of all the planned closings:

A complete list of planned Borders closures can be found here: Borders Store Closings

A&W, founded in 1919 and known for its root beer, had the trio’s highest satisfaction rates, said YouGov BrandIndex, which does daily consumer perception research on brands. 

A&W and Arby’s had higher satisfaction scores than an average of about two dozen fast-food chains, while Long John Silver’s fared worse. (See graphic below)

“A&W and Arby’s have a core group of supporters and satisfied customers,” said Ted Marzilli, global managing director for YouGov BrandIndex. “If I’m a buyer, that’s a strength.”

Marzilli predicted that all three brands would find buyers, although prices and other terms likely would differ.

He said A&W and Arby’s could be reinvigorated by buyers who focused on their strengths, while Long John Silver’s is more of a turnaround story.

Another big question is whether any of the chains will snag a valuation as rich as the one attached to Burger King’s $3.3 billion sale to 3G Capital last year.  The $24 per share sale price represented a 46 percent premium to Burger King’s price before news of the negotiations emerged.

When asked how Burger King satisfaction scores looked, Marzilli said they were ”a hair higher” than Arby’s over the last six months. 

Jeff Bezos doesn't like this tradition. He will hint at the generous present that consumers gave to Amazon in the form of surprisingly strong sales, but he won't offer details.

Bezos wants you to know that his Kindle – the e-book reader that has done a remarkably good job surviving in the age of the iPad – was Amazon's “bestselling product of all time.” How many Kindles did Amazon sell? We don't know because Amazon isn't saying.

What Amazon does say is that the third generation of the Kindle surpassed even the number of Harry Potter 7 books it sold. Which is kind of disingenuous because Kindles are sold primarily through Amazon, while Harry Potter books are available in nearly every bookstore. But it does offer a hint: Some 5 million copies of Harry Potter have sold on Amazon since 2007, one analyst estimates.

Usually, analysts step in to offer sales figures that Amazon won't. But in the case of the Kindle, they can't seem to agree. One reckons Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles in 2010, while another pegs that number at 8 million.

Either number is impressive, so why doesn't Amazon share it? Over on Quora, a former Amazon employee suggested it's because the disclosure would help Amazon's competitors. But nobody sells Kindle's but Amazon, and few e-readers are even close to it in sales, unless you count the iPad.

But the iPad is a tablet, and the cheapest version of the iPad costs four times Kindle's $139 price tag. Besides, Apple makes a point in bragging about how many iPads, iPod Touches and iPhones it sells each quarter, and it only seems to fuel sales.

Consumers like to buy hit products: It might even help Kindle sales if Amazon disclosed just how many it's selling.

That is good news from one angle. eBay is having success using mobile devices to sell goods during the busiest retailing period of the year. But it obscures another fact: Mobile sales may be a growing market, but it's a tiny portion of eBay's overall sales. And overall sales don't appear to be growing nearly as fast.

eBay's Gross Merchandise Volume (the total value of all goods sold through eBay) was $48.3 billion in 2009, excluding car sales, and that figure is likely to top $50 billion in 2010. The $230 million GMV of mobile sales is equal to only 0.5% of eBay's total GMV last year.

Put another way, the volume of goods sold through mobile devices during the holiday season is about 6 percent of the average volume of goods sold each month on eBay.

Overall, eBay's holiday business grew but not as fast as other online retailers. According to ChannelAdvisor, a software company working with online retailers, eBay's holiday business increased 11% during the busy Thanksgiving weekend, lagging the 68% growth rate for Amazon and the overall e-commerce growth rate of 27%.

eBay has a chance to use the growing popularity of its mobile apps to boost that growth rate in coming years. But if it wants to grow as fast as the rest of the e-commerce industry does during the Christmas season, it needs to find some additional incentives.

1. Domaine Ste. Michelle Cuvee Brut  $12
2. Santa Margherita Prosecco Di Valdobbiadene Brut  $17
3. Freixenet Cordon Rosado $10
4. Domaine Tselepos Amalia Brut $24
5. Gruet $14
6. Dom Perignon $125-$150
   
7. Bollinger RD 1997 $130-$150
8. Krug Brut Grande Cuvee 1998 $180-$200
9. Giulio Ferrari 1997 $100

There are many other sparklers that didn't make it into the story such as:  Lucien Albrecht ($19), Nino Franco Rustico Prosecco ($19) and The Chook, a sparkling Shiraz from Australia ($17).

Why the price disparity? In part it has to do with marketing - Champagne makers have been at it for more than 200 years. In part, it has to do with labor and the cost of land.  An acre (or hectare) costs much less in New Mexico than it does in Champagne.

The different flavors: they come from different grapes. While Gruet uses the same grapes -- Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and  Pinot Meunier found in Champagne, the taste will reflect the terroir of New Mexico -- dry and like minerals.  Prosecco is the grape and the region just outside Venice where it is grown.

The long and short of it is that you don't have to spend a fortune to pop some pleasure.