If you received a great Christmas present last year, and are hoping for the same kind of treatment this year, don’t hold your breath — U.S. consumers are planning to spend conservatively this holiday season, according to two new surveys.

A Gallup poll found that consumers, on average, plan to spend $740 this year on holiday gifts. At this time last year, consumers said they planned to spend $801 on average. That number fell to $616 during a November poll, although it recovered slightly to $639 in a December poll.

The latest Gallup survey, which polled over 1,000 consumers from Oct 1-Oct 4, found that 33 percent of respondents said the planned to spend less this year on holiday gifts. Last year, that figure was 35 percent.

Apart from 2008, when retailers faced the toughest holiday shopping season in nearly four decades, Gallup said its 2009 spending outlook is the worst since mid-December 1991, when 33 percent of Americans said they would spend less on gifts than the year before.

The trend of paring back is the same among the nation’s elite.

A separate survey, which polled 684 people with an average income of $300,000 and net worth of $3.1 million, found that nine percent of those people said they would not buy any gifts this year. Three percent said they would spend more than they did last year, while 38 percent said they would spend less.

The survey, by the American Affluence Research Center, estimated this group of consumers would spend about $2,400 per household, on average, for holiday gifts.

(Photo: Reuters)

Check out Americans, fed up with financial doom, who are wishing for a cheerier economy in 2009.

The Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, New York, polled 1,003 Americans about their expectations for 2009 on December 9 and 10 — days after the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed the United States had been mired in a recession since December 2007 — and found that Americans are optimistic that 2009 will be a better year.

Expectations for a brighter future were higher among younger generations, with 64 percent of those under 45 having an optimistic view compared with 52 percent for those 45 or older.

Meanwhile, the sentiment is decidedly sad.

Hefty job losses are contributing to year-end gloom in the United States, where consumer confidence hit a record low in December — a month that is traditionally marked by spending splurges on Christmas and other holiday gifts.

“The overall economic outlook remains quite dismal for the first half of 2009, and only a modest recovery is expected in the second half,” said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center.

Employers slashed more than a half million jobs in November alone, the most in 34 years, and layoffs continued in December. Paying off debt and cutting spending is the new fashion as consumers brace for the worst.

That shift to thrift is evident in U.S. holiday retail sales, which were the worst since at least 1970 due to a year-long economic slump, heavy discounting and harsh winter weather just before Christmas, the International Council of Shopping Centers said.

To top it all off, there is more bad news from the beleaguered housing market.

Prices of U.S. single-family homes in October plunged a record 18 percent from a year earlier, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

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(Photo\Reuters)

Check Out the online deals planned for next Monday.

Most online shops are touting special promotions for Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving when, admit it, you use your high-speed Internet connection at work to check out sales.  This year’s promotions — including a lot of free shipping — are crucial as retailers try to lure in shoppers who have been pulling back on spending ahead of the traditional holiday selling season.
 
SpendingPulse said Sunday that U.S. sales of everything from apparel to appliances plunged in the first two weeks of November, as consumers are cutting back on everything but necessities in this tough economy.  
 
Nearly 84 percent of online retailers plan to have a Cyber Monday promotion, up from 72 percent who planned Cyber Monday deals last year, according to a survey by online shopping site Shopzilla for Shop.org, the Internet division of the National Retail Federation.

In early November, Internet sales did not perform as poorly as the overall lot, according to SpendingPulse, the retail data service of MasterCard Advisors, an arm of MasterCard Worldwide.  Online sales showed the most modest decline of the period, at 7.5 percent. 

“It’s still very, very challenging. We’ve been seeing a deteriorating retail environment for some time, but in the last 10 days of October things started to deteriorate rapidly. That’s continuing in November,” said Michael McNamara, vice president of SpendingPulse.

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(Reuters photo)

Check Out more people escaping the troubled U.S. economy by turning themselves, their children and their pets into ghosts and goblins.

More than 64 percent of people plan to celebrate Halloween this year, up from nearly 59 percent last year, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween survey.

The average person plans to spend $66.54 on Halloween this year, up from $64.82 last year, said the NRF. Consumers on average will spend $24.17 on costumes, $20.39 on candy,  $18.25 on decorations and $3.73 on greeting cards. 

But that news is not so great when you consider that this year’s $2.65 increase is less than the rate of inflation.

Adjusted for inflation, consumers would need to buy $68.49 worth of Halloween merchandise just to break even with last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.

Still, total Halloween spending for 2008 is estimated to reach $5.77 billion, which is sure to help retailers struggling with less foot traffic as consumers pressured by high food and gas prices curb spending and trips to the store.

The NRF poll of 8,167 consumers was conducted from September 2-9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percent.

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(Photo/Reuters)