Wal-Mart hopes to boost holiday sales with low priced toys

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Wed, Sep 30 2009 | 3 Comments

Wal-Mart has had success around Christmastime. In the past it has offered toys by price point such as $10 toys and $15 toys. This year it is going to be upping its offering of $10 toys to more than 100 toys, including 10 of its most popular toys.

So, what can $10 at Wal-Mart get your child? There are Barbie dolls, board games, Transformers action figures, and even Play-Doh kits (I loved those when I was a kid). When you’re paying $10 for Monopoly, you are definitely getting a deal because any other time throughout the year, Monopoly costs $15-$20.

The discounts on toys will last through the holiday season.

Laura Phillips, the vice president of toys (side note: how fun would that job be?) for Wal-Mart said that when mothers were surveyed, their top priority for shopping this holiday season is finding toys that fit into their budgets. She went on to say, “What we learned from last holiday was that price mattered more than ever.”

This could be why the majority of toys on the Toys R Us list that came out are all under $20.

The holiday season is when retailers make up for poor sales through out the year. On average, holiday sales make up 25 to 40% of the annual revenue for a retailer. Last year was the worst holiday shopping season in almost 40 years according to some analysts.

Phillips said that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of shoppers of Wal-Mart begin their holiday shopping sometime before Halloween and that 20% actually finish their shopping by Halloween.

If you haven’t been out in a couple of weeks, it really looks like some retailers are trying to take advantage of that. I have seen more Christmas decorations out earlier than last year. Even at a local Walgreen’s, they had pulled out the Christmas wrapping paper from last year that still had the 50% off signs on them. I can guarantee that those signs will come off and the paper will be put out as soon as they can clear space for it in the middle of the store.

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Tags: christmas wrapping paper, holiday shopping, holiday season