America’s Wealthiest Shop At Macy’s?

by Verena von Pfetten | 11:08 am, April 16th, 2010

When we dream of being rich, it usually involves black Amex cards with limitless credit, sprees at Bergdorf’s and Barney’s, and all the one-of-a-kind vintage money can buy. Which is why it was extra surprising to see that rich Americans prefer to shop at Macy’s.

According to an infographic compiled by The Business of Fashion, consumers with an annual income of $100,000 or more spend more time shopping at Macys.com than they do at Neimans, Barney’s, ShopBop, Bloomies, and Saks combined. The top five online shopping destinations include Nordstrom’s, Zappos, JC Penney, and Kohl’s.

Leonora Epstein over at The Frisky expresses some disbelief that Barneys.com is at the bottom of the list. As a New York-centric store with only 14 outposts nation-wide, this actually seems appropriate. And the more we look at BoF’s infographic, the more we think its results are less dramatic and more, well, appropriate.

First, it’s worth mentioning — as BoF does — that the data used to compile these results is at best an estimate. But more importantly, an annual income of $100,000 a year doesn’t get you particularly far in America’s most urban cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, or Chicago. It does, however, go a long way if you’re in a mid-sized city like Omaha or Jacksonville, where a Neiman Marcus, Saks, or Barney’s outpost is unlikely — but Kohl’s, Macy’s, and JC Penney are all mall real estate staples. People shop with brands they know. Also: let’s be honest, Bergdorf’s sells $10,000 dresses. No one in their right mind is going to spend 10% of their income on one dress.

Right?

One final thought: it’s interesting to see how much of the market flash sale sites have carved out — Gilt, GiltMan, GiltFuse, Rue La La, and HauteLook all ranked relatively well. But who doesn’t love a bargain?

Anyway, full infographic below. What do you think? Does it line up with your shopping tendencies?

via Signature 9.

business of fashion macys Shopping The Frisky

Andrew Cedotal

This infographic doesn’t even begin to grapple with the fact that probably something like 90% of each site’s regular visitors also overlap with other sites. Representing relative traffic with something like a bar graph makes sense — representing it in a way that implies the existence of a zero-sum audience doesn’t. This isn’t the nightly news.

tl;dr Ousley’s “analysis” is actually just a graph.
Signature9

Generally infographics are meant to give a quick picture of a trend or statistics, so by nature it wasn’t intended to be an advanced or very complex analysis. More a snapshot of visitor trends within a certain market.

Some of the sites definitely share visitors – and that may be the subject of a future infographic, but a visitor who goes to both Saks and Bloomingdale’s doesn’t change the fact that far more visitors in the $100k+ demographic are going to Macy’s. It’s not something we expected, and seeing JC Penney’s and Kohl’s so high on the list was a surprise.

But at the end of the day, there’s a demonstrated current trend of high-income web users going to mid-range and discount etailers more often than high-end, luxury destinations.

Economic models, affinity scores and shopper psychology can all be part of the debate on why it happens, but very simply put full priced designer clothing isn’t as important to $100k+ shoppers as many people would assume. Within major metro areas like New York or LA, maybe that’s not the case, but there are a significant enough portion of people who are putting their disposable income elsewhere. Maybe it’s home, travel, savings, investing – I can’t say for sure, but anecdotaly speaking I’ve known plenty of people well over the $100k+ mark who shopped at Kohl’s or Banana Republic far more often than Neiman Marcus or Marc Jacobs. I remember a man who was well over the $200k mark being disappointed in the knockoff LV bag he received, because while he wanted to buy his wife something nice, he thought he was getting a discount rather than buying a fake. As far as clothes, he wanted to make sure he got a “deal” even when full price was affordable.

And while he may not have been on any frequent customer list at high end stores, he put 3 kids through private school, college and grad school for the oldest without any student loans, took nice vacations and lived in a well-decorated house that was big enough for 2 families. He spent money, it just wasn’t on clothes. His wife, who added another $100k to the household income had similar spending habits.

-YM

America’s Wealthiest Shop At Macy’s?

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