Nielsen report says more than a third of U.S. shoppers cutting back this holiday season

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. According to research released today by the Nielsen Co. about 35 percent of consumers in the United States plan to be spending less on holiday shopping this year. Nielsen surveyed 21,000 households with various incomes to produce the research.

A very small amount—6 percent—said that they plan to spend more on the holidays than last year and about and half of the people surveyed said they plan to spend the same amount this holiday shopping season as last year. The timeframe equal to about one month between Thanksgiving week and the last week of December is the period commonly referred to as the “holiday shopping season.”

About 28 percent of consumers surveyed said that they plan to spend at department and electronics stores, Nielsen said. But more shoppers—about 50 percent of those who said they would be spending the same amount as in 2007—said they would be making purchases at grocery stores, mass retailers and supercenters and mass merchandisers. Another 12 percent of shoppers said they would likely be buying gift cards at convenience and drug stores and/or gas stations, the survey results said.