RoxAnna Sway

About RoxAnna Sway

RoxAnna Sway is Director of Retail Intel, an Atlanta-area-based consulting firm specializing in research, analysis, and interpretation of consumer trends—including shopping, economic, psychographic, social and cultural trends—and helping businesses better understand how emerging trends are shaping the consumer marketplace.

Maybe It’s Not Inflation, but an Economic Recalibration

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What if the current price increases American consumers are experiencing are not temporary, caused by inflationary pressures, but instead are signs of a once every 70- to 100-year massive economic recalibration? Free Range Pricing We saw this happen in the last century. It started with a gasoline crisis in 1973, and it continued into the 1980s. During that period, prices for nearly everything soared and then most stayed at higher levels creating an entirely new consumer reality. Prices were rising so fast that many retailers for a time did …

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Why Green is More Than a Color for 2022

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The Covid-19 recession of 2020 saw big gains for categories of merchandise including groceries, health and wellness-related products, pet food/supplies, furniture, and the DIY or home improvement category. It came as no surprise that while spending more time at home, people sought to improve the comfort, safety, visual appeal, and functionality of their environments. A study by Harvard University researchers found that 2020 was a record-breaking year for home improvements, with consumers spending around $420 billion on DIY projects. By May …

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Living [and Shopping] Through Clouds of Emotion

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By the 1980s, marketers understood that when consumers had all the “essential stuff” they needed and that in the future, those shoppers would buy based on desire, driven by emotion. That supported Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of human needs, a psychological theory first put forth in the 1940s. When the majority of peoples’ physical needs for shelter, food, clothing and such have been met they can venture into the realm of personal relationships, social connections, status among peers, feelings of accomplishment—and ultimately, aspirational …

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What Home Buyers Want Now: 10 Post-Pandemic Priorities

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The residential real estate market has been a bright spot during the pandemic-driven economic downturn that began early last year. There were initial fears that we might see a repeat of the real estate meltdown that started in 2008, when millions of homes entered foreclosure and homes lost an average of 30 percent of their market value. But so far, housing has performed better than expected. Boom Towns According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), in 88 percent of metro areas tracked, single-family, existing home prices rose by …

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Welcome to the Data Sphere

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In the mid-1980s, at a lecture in New York, author and counterculture visionary Robert Anton Wilson introduced his theory about the growth of information, called the "Jumping Jesus Phenomenon." In short, his theory was that it took until the time of Jesus (1 A.D. or thereabouts) for all the knowledge that was in the world in 1500 B.C. to double. It took 250 years for that body of knowledge to double again and then 150 years to double after that. By 1750, knowledge had increased by four times, or four Jesuses. By 1973, we had the equal to 128 …

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Six Unexpected Takeaways from Covid-19

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Covid-19 has now been around long enough for us to start drawing some conclusions from our shared experiences. The Pandemic is far from over and has prompted almost everyone to think deeply about their lives, relationships, values and attitudes. Part of this re-evaluation has been caused by so much extra time in shelter, watching a medical, economic and social justice drama unfold on our screens of choice. For essential workers, it has been a 24/7 call to action; for nonessential workers it has been an opportunity to reflect and reset. For …

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The Next Wave of Wellbeing

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For nearly a century, retailers and other businesses have relied on television advertising to promote their products. And while advertising for some customers has been morphing more and more into the mobile device arena and streaming on demand, television still remains a useful medium for conveying marketing messages to broad segments of the population. Advertising can provide an insightful view into the consumer's psyche and can reveal what consumers are most interested in at a given point in time as well as current and emerging …

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Retail: One Piece in the U.S.-China Trade War Puzzle

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Retailers are battening down the hatches, preparing for a tsunami of tariff-related price increases that are threatening their businesses and consumers' pocketbooks. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, $250 billion in goods have already been taxed with a 25 percent tariff, $107 billion in goods are set for September 1st tariffs of 10 percent, and additional tariffs on $156 billion in "certain goods"-electronics and clothing, including cell phones, footwear and toys-have now been delayed until December 15th (giving customers a …

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