Charlie Cook On Air: The Holiday Sales Push

You know I am a big fan of the CMA research department. If you and your station are wondering whether you should be a CMA member, just having access to the research studies throughout the year (8-12 studies) can be reason enough. Karen Stump and her staff do a great job making sure the studies are actionable. The information is useful for personalities, programmers and of course sales staffs.
The new study deals with Holiday retail shopping habits of Country Music Consumers. The study was conducted via an online survey in August 2013 against 778 (members of the CMA Insider Consumer panel) respondents 18+.
This has not been the best year, economically, for America but 89% of the respondents say they plan to do additional shopping for Christmas. And of these shoppers, 52% will begin before Black Friday with another 17% panning to start the day after Thanksgiving. If you’re like me you stay far away from malls as you digest your turkey dinner but 50% of the shoppers will be in the stores that day. Cyber Monday has become another excuse to goof off at work and 67% of these folks will be online shopping (and checking Facebook) on December 2nd.
When you are in the store be sure you’re looking at the $75 and (slightly) under category. The average amount spent per Christmas gift is $72. In a perfect world for Music Row that would be six CDs but in real life 63% of shoppers are spending the gift money on Clothing and Shoes, 52% say DVDs and video games; 50% say toys and 49% say music/CDs.
Because this is a country music listener study, alcohol is the second most popular holiday spending category. Almost the entire panel (95%) will purchase holiday-specific food for Thanksgiving. Seventy-two percent will spend money on alcohol for New Year’s Eve. Halloween has become a huge spending holiday with over three quarters of these folks spending money on decorations. Those paper turkeys and funny New Year’s hats are also great targets for spending with about half of the revelers taping them to their walls.
In this group of almost 800 consumers the 18-34 males should be your target for music messages. Almost a third of this demo is planning to spend on music for New Year’s. So this is not gift giving music but personal music to account for what they did not receive in their stocking. This could be gift card purchases.
On average, Country Music Consumers will spend nearly $1000 this Christmas. The number only creeps up over $1000 in households with children. But if you think you’re going to be able to keep your card balance in check, think again. Add in Thanksgiving, New Years and Halloween and average amounts slams into $1700.00.
Four out of 10 of these consumers will buy music so some of that $1000 makes its way to Nashville. But now is not the time to start spending that bonus money, because three of the four top retailers that these shoppers are most likely to shop on Black Friday do not carry music.
1. Walmart (90% shop Walmart for holidays)
2. Walgreens (74%)
3. CVS (70%)
4. Kohl’s (68%)
5. Best Buy (62%)
6. Target (60%)
7. Dollar Tree (60%)
8. JCP (58%)
9. Staples/Office Depot (58%)
10. Bed Bath and Beyond (57%)
I hope some of this material will help you communicate with your audience and help you get ahead of the sales push.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MusicRow.)