With anticipation building up about the sales performance for the coming holiday season, preliminary results of the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council (JCOC) post-Thanksgiving Shopping study indicates a readiness in consumers to shop as before. The results inform that JCOC respondents stated that they spent, or are planning to spend, the same amount of money on fine jewellery gifts this year as they did in 2007.

Responding to a question on “where did you make your fine jewellery purchase?” local independent fine jewellery retailers decreased 5 percent in 2008, down from 10 percent Thanksgiving 2007. Online fine jewellwry sales were down in 2008 by only 1 percent from 2007 with “found a great deal” and “more convenient” cited as two common reasons people shopped online. The category of “More variety” decreased by 7 percent to 3 percent in 2008. The final results are expected shortly.