Morgan Stanley's Retail Analyst Fields Some Of The Most Pressing Questions From CNBC's Viewers

had an opportunity to direct retail related questions to one of the Street's most notable analysts, Morgan Stanley's Kimberly Greenberger earlier this week (check out her track record).

L Brands Versus Amazon

Greenberger was asked by a viewer to comment on L Brands Inc LB's competitive threat from Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and other online players.

While approximately 50 percent of Americans do buy clothes online the analyst's deep dive into the topic found that few of these purchases are for lingerie related items. This bodes well for a retailer like L Brands' Victoria's Secret since there is "nothing romantic about buying your lingerie on Amazon.com."

Stores are vital in the customer experience when sizing matters most, the analyst continued. This also applies to men's suits but surprisingly not so much for shoes, which are the second-most purchased item on Amazon.

Delayed Tax Refunds

Retailers are known for playing the blame game and this year some companies attributed poor performance to a delay in receiving tax refunds.

The lower-income consumer group was impacted from the tax refund delay in February, the analyst answered. But once this issue was mostly fixed and taxpayers received their refund payments, retailers did see a boost in sales in late February and early March.

However, the boost in retail sales came too late for the all-important President's Day shopping period and Valentine's Day.

"Even though those are minor holidays, the catch-up spending was just not very robust so retailers did not get it all back," Greenberger said.

Q2 Outlook

Finally, Greenberger noted that the weather is turning favorable for retailers so there might be improvements in seasonal apparel demand but this stands as the analyst's most optimistic view she can give for the quarter.

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