First, when asked, most people cannot accurately recall their aggregate spending. Often times what they THINK they spent and what they actually spent can be wildly different.

Second, people’s prospective view of their spending behavior is often less driven by their actual economic position than it is by their perception of the economic future generically. Since the public, on the whole, is still negative on the economy, people still believe they will be tightening their belt in 12 months. This perception, one way or the other, is almost always independent of reality.

Third, women are more likely to shop on-line than men generically speaking. Since their volume is higher, they are going to be more prone to have fluctuations in their spending. A guy whose spending is a few books from Amazon is less likely to perceive a future spending fluctuation than a woman who buys multiple pairs of shoes from Zappos or who hits neimanmarcus.com regularly.

But I view all this with a jaundiced eye. Once again, the group pushing this data on us shows us one slide of data…no demographics…no showing of the survey instrument construction or methodology. That always makes me suspicious about the quality of the data. You don’t hide that stuff if it is honest AND it supports your point of view. You flash it to add credibility.

Bottom line is that I would not make a lot of decisions based off of one slide from a group that is not sharing the demographics of the data set, the wording of the questions asked, or the structure of the survey. Hell, these guys don’t even tell you the size of the sample or the universe from which the sample was drawn. For all I know they made up the numbers from whole cloth. While I think the advice you are providing is sound for any market conditions, I would not drive that advice from these suspect and sketchy numbers.