I often wonder if people tell the truth on polls that ask them for specific information related to finances or how they feel about their money. There are often discrepancies between what people say they will do and what they actually end up doing. For example, I was reading the poll done by the Harrison Group and American Express Publishing Corporation saying that affluent Americans would be increasing their spending for the 2012 holiday season. With tax increases in sight and little reason to celebrate, I found this hard to believe:
America as a whole is expected to spend less during this period in 2012, but the Top 10% – based on wealth – plan to spend over 20% more. “We’re predicting overall holiday gift spending to decline,” confirms Cara David, Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing & Integrated Media at American Express Publishing.
“But the top of the market will increase substantially. Luxury retailers can take comfort in the fact that 39% of the ‘Top 1%’ plan to splurge on gifts for their significant others to make the holiday season memorable. Women especially, are also looking to purchase gifts for themselves in categories like fashion, jewellery and accessories….”
The top 10% will account for nearly 29% of the total 2012 holiday spend, and will increase their gift giving spend 21.9% this year over 2011.
Today, I was reading over at Zero Hedge a post that seems to contradict this information:
Despite all the rancor about seasonally-adjusted ad hoc beats of holiday week retail sales (amid burgeoning discounts), the trend (post the Hurricane Sandy-driven surge) in GAFO (General Merchandise, Apparel and Accessories, Furniture and Other Sales) retail sales is most explicitly lower…
As Rich Yamarone concludes: it appears “You can’t spend what you don’t have.” It seems ‘tax-the-rich’ is also misfiring as those making over $90k per year report recent spending at its lowest for this time of year since 2008….
Although November marks the beginning of the holiday season — generally a time for spending and splurging — Americans did not spend any more than usual this November, and upper-income Americans appear to be spending less than usual.
It makes me wonder if affluent Americans try to say the right things at times such as “yes, I will be spending more to bolster the economy” or “yes, please tax me more!” to try to make themselves less of a target or to get kudos from their fellow man. People say a lot of things but they often don’t mean them. In this negative milieu against those with money, it kind of makes sense.
However, it could just be that certain pollsters look for support for their PC agendas– American Express Publishing and The Harrison Group also found that 67 percent of the top one percent of American earners support higher income taxes. Is this really true? Maybe as true as the affluent spending more this holiday season.
I believe that not only are poll questions often inherently biased in order to elicit desired responses, and also responders sometimes tend to give answer they think pollsters are looking for, but further, that if pollsters end up getting answers they don’t like, they just ignore them.
I happen to be among lucky few with a steady job, fewer expenses (kids are out on their own), and a spouse who went to school and is now working as an RN, so we are essentially middle-aged DINKs…but we definitely spent less this holiday season because we feel a need to hunker down as far as money is concerned.
Fewer than one person in eleven even answers a pollster anymore. The answers they do get are from people too stupid to use Caller ID effectively.
Let’s leave aside the accuracy of polls and polling techniques for a moment to address the opening question: whether “affluent Americans would be increasing their spending for the 2012 holiday season.” As a rule, when economic conditions worsen, vendors and retailers “move upscale,” reasoning that when times are tough the very well-to-do are more likely to spend than the less well off. The logic appears to be borne out by retailers’ experiences; a friend in Southern California, a marketing consultant to the fashion industry, confirms this.
Now to the polls. Americans who answer pollsters’ questions, few as they may be, tend to reflect the conventional wisdom on the subject at hand. That might square with their real beliefs, though it would be difficult to determine that. What appears more reliable is that when queried by a stranger about some matter of public interest, those who answer are reluctant to stray from “what everybody knows,” whether or not that’s well founded on logic and evidence.
Darrell Huff presents an interesting vignette relevant this in his book How to Lie with Statistics. Before World War II, some publisher became interested in what periodicals New Yorkers were reading, and commissioned a door-to-door survey to find out. The results of that survey suggested that something like ten times as many Americans read Harper’s as the circulation figures would support. Conversely, those who claimed to read True Story were far fewer than that magazine’s circulation figures. Needless to say, those results were viewed with suspicion.
The reason? Harper’s, then as now, was regarded as a “right” magazine for “intelligent” people. Respondents to the survey might have been reading anything or nothing, but, wanting to leave the “right” impression with the survey taker, disproportionately claimed to be Harper’s readers. After all, “everybody knows” that the “right” people read Harper’s, not True Story.
Huff suggested that a better way to determine what people were reading was to omit the question of what they were reading and reach for their wallets: simply express an interest in buying any old magazines they had lying around, and take note of which ones were offered. People tend to be more honest when dishonesty will negatively affect their bank balances, than when the only impact of their statements will be on a stranger’s personal assessment of them.
you seem to be under the impression that the objective of polls is to be an objective measure of people’s opinions and by extrapolation, what they will do.
Polls are about as useful as criminal profilers. Polls show residents and traffic in and through Berverly Hills are white, wealthy, educated, driven, subject to addictions, etc. Profiler at gun murder scene in Beverly Hills, declares the perp to be white, knowledgeable of the area, may have known the victims (no visible signs of forced entry) seeking to increase his wealth assests (burglar-missing jewlry), psychotic and most likely a criminal.
More seriously, polls are as corrupted as everything else in the country these days.