Drag on holiday spending
By Philippine standards, today is the start of the traditional seven-day religious countdown to Christmas with this morning’s centuries-old practice of “Simbang Gabi” (early morning mass), a practice that is unique to the Philippines.
This is the time of the year when businesses engaged in commercial retail, in particular, shopping malls, expect to rake in sales that can make up for slack in purchases in the preceding months, which were marked by several natural calamities that derailed regular commercial activities.
Sales during this period reportedly represent approximately 19 percent of total sales for the entire year, with toys, clothes and personal items usually getting the lion’s share.
For entrepreneurs with excellent culinary skills, the holiday season is a golden opportunity for them to take advantage of many Filipinos’ disposition to temporarily set aside their dietary restrictions to partake of calorie-full foods associated with the season.
But the usual holiday buying spree may not happen anytime soon, if at all.
According to TransUnion Consumer Pulse Study (a global information and insight company on commerce), one-half of the 961 respondents to its survey that covered the fourth quarter of the year expect to spend less on holiday shopping compared with last year as they cope with price pressures.
This forecast runs against the grain of the Filipino habit of going all-out in making Christmas a season of joy for their family and loved ones, even to the point of going into debt to make that happen.
The usual excuse for doing that is the attitude that since Christmas happens only once a year, it deserves to be celebrated to its full capacity and all financial worries can be attended to the following year.
This jibes with the “yolo” (you only live once) mantra that millennials and Generation Z people often invoke to justify their putting a premium on personal enjoyment in their daily life.
For obvious reasons, the projected reduction in holiday spending will not sit well with businesses that look to this month as the period that they would be able to recover from poor sales or increase their revenues.
If things fan out against expectations and hope, this year’s bottom line would leave much to be desired or, worse, be a reason to rethink continuing operations.
But come to think of it, the pressure to cut back on holiday spending would give Filipinos with marginal incomes second thoughts about trying to keep up with the joneses in the Christmas celebration.
This would mean refusing to succumb to promotions or advertisements that send the subliminal message that the enjoyment of the season would be incomplete or less fulfilling if their products are not bought at supposedly bargain prices, even on installment basis.
The slick advertisements are often directed to children who can work on their parents to convince them to buy the items being promoted in the “spirit of giving” at this time of the year.
With less money to spend, households would have to closely review their wish list to figure out which expenses are critical and therefore should be given priority, and which expenses can be set aside or postponed for a later date when the resources become available.
Knowing the Filipino psyche at this time of the year, deciding on that issue is not going to be easy, as it would mean breaking with tradition, so to speak, or making the usual beneficiaries of holiday largesse less happy, if not totally frustrated. What a damper on the supposedly happiest time of the year!
The scenario would be reminiscent of the frame of mind of families of old during town fiestas who were willing to go into debt to fund those celebrations (and worry about paying it later) lest they lose face in the community if their participation in those rituals was less than grandiose.
It remains to be seen whether the forecast of a dip in holiday spending would happen or the traditional spending habits of Filipinos would continue to persist even when times are hard, as they are today.
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