Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We’ll take our first question from Lauren Levitan from Cowen and Company. Go ahead, please.
Lauren Levitan - Cowen and Company
Thank you. Good morning. I’m hoping that all of you could provide us with a little bit more color on how the consumer is behaving. Howard, you made some references to this but maybe you could give us some sense of are you seeing regional variations, are there categories or price points or things that they are responding to better than others? I’m curious if that focus on quality that you’ve been communicating in the catalog and in stores, if that’s resonating.
And then related to those expectations for the consumer, I mean, clearly you’ve said that you aren’t expecting things to get better. If you could give us some sense of how that comp trend that you’ve given us for the year, what the underlying assumptions associated with that are.
And then I have a second question for Howard; it’s almost two years since you returned into the CEO role. I’m wondering if you can give us some update on your plans and thoughts around the overall management structure. Thank you very much.
W. Howard Lester
Well, that’s a lot of questions, Lauren, and we wish we had all the answers for you.
First, to kind of give you a little more color on the consumer, you know, we are seeing regional variances, and distinctly so. It’s pretty negative in some of the places, like Florida, Atlanta particularly are difficult. The West Coast is difficult, particularly in Southern California, places where home prices rose the most and dropped the most dramatically and Las Vegas, places like that, are bad; Scottsdale, Arizona -- and on the other hand, we are seeing some really bright pockets. We don’t know whether that’s going to continue or not -- places like Texas and Oklahoma and through all of that part of the country is quite strong. Chicago, the upper Midwest amazingly enough has been strong from a comp basis, although we suffered in the upper Midwest a couple of years ago, so that kind of accounts for that to some extent.
So we are seeing those. We just don’t know what to make of it. We do know that considered purchases are more difficult. You know, as we told you before, we started to see higher transaction rates this fall and lower average tickets, and so we know that the consumer is just spending less when they spend. And we are seeing that, and of course that makes it difficult for those of us in the home business particularly, because of our price points and the ticket that they have to step up to is more difficult than in Williams-Sonoma, for example, where our business has remained -- has been affected but has remained relatively strong.
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