At this point in the buying season, parents have only spent $71.96 so far, so there is time for stores to get aggressive and drive more sales.

Wal-Mart deserves their high admiration level because they do what they say. They give America a place to buy at low prices in stores where employees seem happy to be there and willing to assist customers when questions are asked.

The closer you get to Christmas, there's this mentality on the part of consumers where they're willing to go out just a little bit more to get the even bigger discounts.

The luxury stores are the ones hitting the home runs and the discount stores are going to end up doing some pretty good numbers, ... I'm very worried that the middle part of the market is not here.

I think at least a third of consumers that previously bought her products will abandon the brand. A number higher than that means the brand is dead.

It's hard to escape a week without some negative story about Wal-Mart. Let's look at the facts. Wal-Mart is clearly the number one retailer in America. Average consumers have to buy the products that Wal-Mart sells and they do this each and every week. The consumer isn't interested in the origin of the products purchased as long as merchandise meets their expectations.

Overall, the moderate-priced stores such as J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart had good traffic levels. We think luxury sales were probably flat this past weekend because more people said they decided to go away on vacation before Christmas this year than last year. So this could have impacted spending on other high-end items.

I probably would produce a little four-minute video mailer explaining exactly what happened and expressing remorseful feelings.

The first thing you would do is you'd assume responsibility.