No one can stop talking about how bad the retail outlook is. Everyone's worried that no one will buy everything up this holiday season, and already there are reports that buyers are putting in much smaller orders for Spring 09 as compared to past seasons. So this fact might sounds strange: Online shopping is up. In fact, overall, it's up 12% over last year.
WWD attributes this to consumers saying they can find better deals online, can do more comparison shopping, and that the price of gas has informed how much/far they're willing to go for a party dress. Indeed, one could even attribute designers suddenly offering up previously unavailable e-commerce opportunities to their customers (Lutz & Patmos just launched a shopping component to their site, as well as Pucci, and Net-a-Porter continues to score site-exclusives from designers like Preen and Richard Nicoll) as an accommodation to this trend.
But we have another, not at all scientific theory to propose: Shame shopping.
