00:00When we talk about the sort of people spending less, I know it's just a little more than half
00:05here, but is that a material change than what we had been seeing in years past in terms of the
00:10changes year to year? Well, thanks. It's a great starting question. So yeah, it's material in the
00:17fact that consumers are really feeling the pinch in their wallet this year, both from our Accenture
00:23macro foresight analysis, where we think 15 percent of prices have changed and increased
00:29actually over the last year, really due to inflation, which we saw this year, this week
00:34actually, in the Fed, as well as what we saw in the retail sales up this August. Consumers are really
00:43feeling the pinch and they're starting shopping early. Almost 20 percent of consumers, shoppers,
00:49have already started shopping for the holiday even before August. Well, give me a sense here,
00:53at least from the retailer's side, as to maybe who sort of benefits from this type of environment.
00:58Is this sort of a Walmart type of Christmas that we're going to be looking at or another type of
01:03discount companies like Costco and even an Amazon in the e-commerce space? Or can sort of the more
01:08specialty retailers sort of hold their own? Yeah, excellent, excellent thinking. So 48 percent of our
01:15shoppers are thinking about using AI to think about where they should shop and which stores should they
01:23shop in. And the predominant recommendations are coming in mass merchants and wholesale clubs,
01:29just as you said. Kath, what do you think this tells us about the economy when consumer spending
01:35accounts for more than two-thirds of economic growth? Well, your chart there says it all, doesn't it?
01:42I think that there's quite a lot of uncertainty, I think is the main word of the day. And I
01:50think there will be a use of
01:52a continued choice. So consumers will look for deals. We're calling this holiday shopping the AI hunter
02:01shopping season. So this is really our first season where AI is really in the mix for brands and retailers.
02:08And that that cautiousness and that concern of that lumpy chart that you just showed really shows the
02:14power of what AI will be able to do to help consumers across demographics, both low, middle, and high,
02:21really find those bargains this year. Where exactly do you think people are going to go for those bargains
02:25if they have those lingering pressures that are affecting how they shop? So I think wise retailers and
02:32brands will realize that the shopping season is on, so game on. And if we think about the promotional cycles,
02:38even before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, 90 percent of the shoppers in our survey said they'll already be
02:45shopping. So I think all retail needs to really think about how they look at both promotions, product assortment,
02:54mix, and being able to communicate those promotional cycles each month, not just the last month of the year as
03:00we
03:01normally would see.
03:01So with some of the promotions, though, and deals, are these going to be more material than in years past?
03:08Because I feel
03:08like the last couple of years, a lot of these deals are kind of, you know, we have to put
03:11deals in quotation marks.
03:13You know, it wasn't the savings that maybe some of us were used to, say, pre-pandemic. Are we going
03:18to see more true
03:19discounting or our inventory levels in the shapes of some of these retailers strong enough to maybe hold the line?
03:25No, I think you're right. There's definitely going to have to be a much more significant, specific set of deals
03:30this year to get
03:31consumers to get out there and shop. For our lower and middle income consumers, they have already depleted their savings
03:38over the
03:38last two years. And so there isn't that extra in the pot. So lay away, buy now, pay later. Those
03:46types of purchases, I think we'll see
03:49much more and more this holiday season than we did last.
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