Junior needs that new toy, Pops needs his heart medicine or Viagra, and Mom has got to have her smokes and Chocolates. So if you have some money to invest or just want some comfort read on:
Cash-short consumers may hold off buying
big-ticket retail items. But they still need food, clothes and
medicine. And they can't seem to do without guilty pleasures such as
alcohol, cigarettes and fancy foods including gourmet chocolate — the
so-called sin stocks.
Research firm Mintel International predicts that
the U.S. cigarette-and-tobacco market will grow 28% to $132 billion
from this year to 2011.
"Even though we're hurting for money, we want to
make our lives a little better with indulgences," says Marcia
Mogelonsky, a Mintel senior analyst.
Keithley of the Toy Industry Association, which
represents 500 toy manufacturers in the USA and abroad, says the
industry has proved to be "recession-resistant" through the years.
Why? Because downturn or not, consumers will buy
$19.95 toys to make their kids happy. What's more, Keithley says,
toymakers are nimble manufacturers, adapting quickly to economic cycles
and bringing new products to stores.
In the Consumer Spending Indicator, a survey of
shoppers by The NPD Group research firm, people are cutting back on
dining out and entertainment outside the home — but not on toy-buying,
says toy industry analyst Anita Frazier.
Toy sales in the USA this year will stay flat at
$23 billion, while worldwide toy sales — growing strongly in China,
India, Brazil and Russia — are projected to surge to $85 billion in
2010, according to The NPD Group.
Parts of the medical technology market also fare
well during economic busts. Patients spend less on cosmetic products
such as dental implants, but they cannot postpone "life-sustaining
procedures and treatment" for heart disease and other ailments, says
co-President Aaron Dickson of Millennium Research Group.
The U.S. market for pacemakers and defibrillators will grow 33% to $6 billion by 2013, Millennium Research says.
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