Out of stock? Out of luck, too
Pandemic supply chain snarls make it even harder for many shoppers to find popular gifts
NEW YORK — Like many shoppers, Kathleen Webber understands the struggles of getting the right gifts for her three children this holiday shopping season amid widespread shortages.
She promised to buy her 23-year-old son the Sony Corp. PlayStation 5, but they haven’t been able to get their hands on the popular game console. Webber says she may have to get him the next best thing — a used smartphone.
“I just don’t know where to get one,” the Yardley, Pennsylvania, resident said of the PS5. “It’s like the Tickle Me Elmos” from 1996.
The holidays have always been defined by disappointing out-of-stock messages on the most popular items. But the pandemic-induced supply chain snarls have created unprecedented shortages across all types of products, from the chips that go into gaming consoles to more mundane items like ties and pajamas.
That has many customers buying early as shortfalls are only expected to worsen as the holiday season moves into the final stretch.
Some shoppers like Danny Groner aren’t being choosy. When Groner realized he needed a new tie for a wedding in December, he found the perfect answer on Amazon: a $7.99 skinny black-and-white tie.
But four days later, he received an email message informing him the tie was out of stock and it wouldn’t arrive until January. That sent the New York publicist into a fit of desperation and forced him to go back on the site for any tie that would meet the approaching deadline.
“It didn’t matter to me whether it was ugly — it got here,” says Groner, who settled on a yellow-and-blue checkered tie.
On Cyber Monday — the biggest online shopping day of the year — the prevalence of out-of-stock messages rose 8% compared to a week earlier, according to Adobe Digital Economy Index. From Nov. 1 through Nov. 29, the number of out-of-stock messages soared close to twofold compared with pre-pandemic levels in January 2020 and up 258% from November 2019, Adobe said.
In response, stores like Kohl’s have added new online tools to help push shoppers to substitutes if their top choice is gone. Shipt, a grocery delivery service owned by Target, now offers customers substitute suggestions based, in part, on their prior shopping behavior. And technology company Obsess, which creates virtual shopping experiences for such brands as American Girl and Ralph Lauren, added tools that recommend next best items if the shopper clicks on something that’s out of stock; it also offers quizzes to help figure out what they would like.
But there are plenty of shoppers who won’t be happy with alternatives, particularly when it comes to must-have toys like Spinmaster’s Gabby’s Dollhouse Purrfect Playset and Moose Toys’ Magic Mixies Magical Misting Cauldron. Some are resorting to eBay where they’re paying three times more than the suggested retail price. Experts also believe they will turn more to gift cards if they don’t like what they see.
A lot is at stake for retailers.
If shoppers can’t get what they want at one store, they could go to another competitor or just not buy an alternative. That could dampen holiday sales, which are expected to be up 8.5% to 10.5% for the November-December period, compared with the year-ago period, according to the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group.