We’ve been writing quite a bit recently about the doom-and-gloom mentality that’s gripping the retail community:

• Black Friday Predictions
• The Litany of Retail Woe: 50 Chains Shutting Stores
• 2009 Holiday Retail Forecast: “It’s Going To Be a Disaster.”
  A depressed shopping season may lead to a transformation of consumer behavior — and the disappearance of several brand-name retailers.
• Insight: Holiday Humbug
  Will the Grinch steal retail’s favorite season?

Well, after the jump, we’re taking a quick look ’round the Web for early results of this year’s Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that’s traditionally seen as the start of the holiday-shopping season. The consensus seems to be that there isn’t any consensus: Having lowered expectations to such a degree, retailers are perhaps getting a bit of good ink for notching a measly 3 percent bump.

In the aftermath, retailers are already steeling themselves for “Cyber Monday,” the online equivalent of “door-buster” sales. (And there’s a phrase, btw, that will have to be retired, following the tragic death Friday of a Wal-Mart employee who was trampled by a sale-crazed mob at a mall on Long Island.)

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In a time when many are focused on the perils of the economic downturn and what it can mean for their bottom line, we forget about those who are less fortunate.

Yesterday, 200 FeedingNYC volunteers congregated at Chelsea Piers to package and transport more than 2,000 Thanksgiving dinners for underprivileged families throughout New York City.

Founded in 2001 by Robert LoCascio (second from left in the photo), chief executive officer of LivePerson — a company to watch in the Web Interaction Management category of CRM‘s 2008 Service Leaders — it is a nice change of pace to the doom-and-gloom news we’ve all been bombarded with recently.

In preparation for the upcoming holiday season, what are your organizations doing to give back to your respective communities? I’d love to hear your stories.

(Photo Credit: Jonathan Ziegler/Patrick McMullen Company)

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, American consumers have a few main things on their minds: Turkey, Pie, and Deals, Deals, Deals. Black Friday is just three days away and Cyber Monday just a short skip after that. The question remains: Are retailers prepared for the onslaught of bargain-hungry shoppers? Perhaps a heavier question is on the minds of retailers: Will consumers deliver the Black Friday results they need to get out of the red?

Analysts are wagering that 2008 Black Friday deals and doorbusters will entice shoppers to stand in line at Best Buy at 5 a.m and will have them clicking the “Buy Now” buttons on e-commerce sites; however, it just won’t happen to the same degree as it has in the past. One retail expert affirms that this year, it won’t just be the early bird who catches the best bargains. In fact, retailers have been extending discounts and promotions for the past few weeks — and will continue to do so until the inventory is depleted. The reason being that retailers ordered inventory a few months back when the economy was in bad shape — but not this bad. Stores will be frantic to get the stock off their hands, hence, offering deals that extend past the Black Friday “Early Bird Special.”

Web analytics solution provider Coremetrics has had its eye on the retail ball for several years now. Each Thanksgiving season, the company aggregates data from its hundreds of online retailers to relay Black Friday and Cyber Monday forecasts and results. In 2007, the company’s benchmark data showed a 20 percent boost in e-commerce sales for Black Friday. John Squire, chief strategy office at Coremetrics, says not surprisingly, this year will be lower. The Coremetrics predictions and results will be released Sunday night. Look out for an extended write-up on destinationCRM.com early next week. Squires says that a number of factors are pointing to a glum Black Friday:

• A shorter shopping season (Thanksgiving and Christmas are a week closer than last year) has put increased pressure on retailers to come out with promotions and to attract shoppers. 
• Coremetrics data of how much time consumers are spending online and what they are looking at suggests that browsing behavior is significantly lower than in previous years. At this point in time, online retail site traffic is only up by 10 percent. In previous years, that number was between 20 and 30 percent. Squires says it’s interesting to look at where Web surfers are spending time. He reveals that consumers are spending more time than ever on finance and banking sites. 
• Squires estimates that retailers have stocked up on items at lower price-points. Sure, this makes for happier customers, but will obviously affect a store’s performance. 

Sleepy shoppers might be happy to note that the deals will be sticking around. Senior Editor Tod Marks sums it up best in his morning interview with CBS. Here’s an excerpt from a CBS Black Friday news story:

A frighteningly long list of retail closures came across the transom during the last few days, and while I haven’t yet fact-checked every point (stay tuned for links, chronology, etc.), I quickly found enough supporting material to merit republishing and amending the list here. (You may have seen a similar list mass-emailed around; I’ve added several additional points.)

Even if one or two bullet points are off in detail, the sheer breadth of the damage here is breathtaking. The bloodbath crosses every kind of retail sector, and is clearly not just a reflection of the tough times we’re in, but a harbinger of worse times to come.

Every closed retail location may represent eventual savings for the company involved (after shouldering the actual costs of the close itself, that is), but also represents dozens or even hundreds of out-of-work employees (who are, after all, someone else’s customers), reductions up the supply chain, and rent and taxes removed from that store’s local economy.

In other words, this is bad news with ripple effects that will be felt for months and years to come. (For starters? According to one report, “Consumers will lose $100 million this year on worthless gift cards, from restaurants and stores that have gone belly up.”)

The list includes retailers that have shuttered (or plan to shutter) their entire chains and filed for bankruptcy protection (Linens ‘N Things, The Sharper Image) and ongoing concerns that have nevertheless announced severe cutbacks (Home Depot, Gap, Macy’s).

Full list after the jump, but feel free to comment below with any other names we should add to this list.

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Just a brief note today, a discussion of social CRM from an anti-social person.

It isn’t that I’m not incredibly jazzed about the possibilities and potential of CRM 2.0 — far from it. The idea of a custom-crafted and individualized relationship between a business and its customers is exciting to me, and I love reading about it, writing about it, seeing demonstrations, and knowing the people who make it a reality. But there’s a cynical, dour, pessimistic side of me that wonders if it isn’t all too much.

Here’s why: There’s a lot of emphasis on customer-driven dialogue, where motivated individuals converse about their experiences and share them with businesses as well as each other. There are usually two times that I’m motivated to do this — when the experience is really bad, or when it’s really good. That leads to a very skewed view of a company, though on the plus side it exposes the very best and the very worst. Any dialogue I have with a business is still going to be fairly transactional — I’ll be talking about what I want, or giving feedback on what has happened recently, but after that I’m done. Leave the ongoing conversation for people who want it.

Also, I sometimes think I prefer the veneer of a relationship to the real thing. Some of it is probably a distasteful brand of snobbery on my part — when the guy who delivers my dinner starts acting like an old friend, I get the willies, and start thinking about changing restaurants because “the help” is getting too familiar. (Never mind that he probably sees me more often than my own family.) Mostly, though, I think it’s because I start to feel like a business expects something of me beyond my payment for good and services received. I guess I just don’t want the responsibility.

Social CRM 2.0 Web enterprise digital client blah blah isn’t going to go away, and it shouldn’t. There will always be people who are motivated to engage with businesses, whether tactically like me or more long-term. As long as there’s a setting in my user profile that lets me dial back the level of pressure in the relationship, I’m cool. And really, isn’t that what personalization is all about?