Holiday sales-article from the star tribune. (outside reading post #1)

Recently, I read an article called “Retailer Blues-No happy Holidays”. This article was written by, Susan Feyder and was in the September 19, 2008 issue of Star Tribune, in the business section. I think the thesis of this article was that the huge increase of gas and grocery prices have costed a decrease in holiday sales. Britt Beemer, a chairman of America’s Research Group, predicts that holiday sales will drop as much as 2 percent compared to last year. He says that some cause of this predicted drop are; a sales season of 6 days shorter than last year’s, online sales and TV advertisements. However, he says that the biggest and main causes of this predicted drop are the gas and grocery prices. Parents say they’re so disgusted with the high prices that they have decided not to buy gifts for eachother but only focus on their kids. The online sales have also increased due to the cost of gas these days, people don’t want to spend more money then they have to. These predictions mainly focus on what happens on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, the start of the holiday season and supposedly the busiest shopping day of the year), Beemer says that if sales aren’t good on this day, businesses could fail!