Improving Consumer Sentiment Buoys “Medium Ticket” Items American consumers are finally coming out of hiding. After months of penny-pinching amid the recession, new figures “showing an improving job market, rising factory output and increased retail sales ” suggest that consumers are no longer restricting their budgets to necessities like food and medicine. They are starting...Read More
Recession, Uncertainty Hammer Big-Ticket PurchasesWhat to know what’s selling today? Not big-ticket items. On a scale of 1-10 (1 is the lowest, 10 is the highest), here is a shorthand — mine — for the magnitude of various consumer (and business) purchase decisions. Just like the Richter scale, this scale is logarithmic, kind of (8.0...Read More
