As the results for holiday sales roll in, most indications point to small increases over last year ranging from less than 1 percent to about 2.5 percent, depending on whom you ask and what exactly is being tracked. And while not all projections were hit, most indications show online sales were strong, particularly mobile sales.
According to MasterCard Spending Pulse Unit, holiday sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 rose 2.3 percent over the same period the year. The figures are based on items like clothing and electronics that typically might be given as gifts and exclude spending on groceries, restaurants, gasoline and automobiles. Overall, total retail spending during the period, including all sectors, rose 3.5 percent. SpendingPulse measures total U.S. retail sales across all payment forms, including all cards, cash and checks.
Sarah Quinlan, the senior vice president of market insights for MasterCard Advisors, which produces the monthly SpendingPulse report, summed up what many are saying about sales and the season.
“The holiday shopping results are in line with expectations, but several factors impacted retail sales this year.Having six fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as bad weather in some parts of the country for the final two weekends of the season clearly had an effect on sales. Yet, holiday sales were a clear improvement over last year’s weaker numbers. One clear bright spot is that many consumers who were stuck indoors turned to online shopping to check items off their list and that helped drive ecommerce growth.”
A separate analysis by MasterCard Advisors also showed that larger retailers performed slightly better than their smaller counterparts this year, likely due to the increased sales and promotions starting early in the season.
ComScore, for its part, estimated U.S. retail e-commerce spending for the first 52 days of the November-December 2013 holiday season reached $42.8 billion, up 10 percent from the comparable period in 20123 (Nov. 2 to Dec. 23, 2012). The results were a bit below comScore’s expectations, due to weaker than expected online spending in the final week before Christmas.
“Our expectations for the online holiday shopping season anticipated that consumers would spend heavily later into the season out of necessity to make up for the highly compressed holiday shopping calendar this year,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Unfortunately that was not in the cards, as the final online shopping week saw considerably softer sales than anticipated, including zero billion dollar spending days – although Monday and Tuesday came close.”
Added Fulgoni, “Strong momentum coming out of Thanksgiving, in addition to heavy weekend buying, suggested we would meet or exceed expectations as long as momentum continued through the final week before Christmas. Unfortunately, the most recent week fell short of those expectations, and it looks like the final season growth rate will end up a few percentage points shy of what we had anticipated.
“In the end, I think we’ll look back at this online holiday season as one where absolute dollar sales gains in consumer spending were held back by heavy retailer price discounting that occurred in an attempt to stimulate consumer demand, while at the same time, consumers weren’t willing or able to increase their spending rate to fully compensate for the six-day shorter shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark data, meanwhile, pegged online sales as 16.5% higher than last year, driven by mobile, which approached 29% of all online sales — up 40% over 2012. Smartphones drove 28.5% of all online traffic compared to tablets, which were responsible for 18.1% of traffic. As such, IBM calls tablets, “the browsing device of choice.”
Physical retailers it appears weren’t so lucky. ShopperTrak, which analyzes retail shopper traffic, reported that for the week of Dec. 16 to Dec. 22, in-store retail sales decreased by 3.1 percent from the same week last year. Retail brick-and-mortar shopper traffic decreased by 21.2 percent compared to the same time period in 2012.
The analysis tracked sales of general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other products (GAFO).
“Bad weather throughout the country kept some shoppers away from stores,” said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak founder. “This past week was their final opportunity to complete their holiday shopping before Christmas – and though many did finish making their purchases, retailers did not see as many shoppers as last year.”
Despite more markdowns and promotional efforts from retailers, “Super Saturday” (Dec. 21) saw a decrease in retail sales by 0.7 percent compared to 2012. In-store shopper traffic decreased 18.1 percent from the same day last year. ShopperTrak predicts after-holiday markdowns to drive robust retail sales and store traffic days to come, particularly the day after Christmas (Dec. 26) and the following Saturday (Dec. 28).
“Many people who have the day after Christmas off of work will be out shopping for end-of-season deals,” said Martin. “Retailers should track their stores’ conversion rates closely to turn more after-Christmas browsers into buyers.”
Finally, sales at major retail chains rose by 1.4 percent for the week ending Dec. 21 compared with the comparable week in 2012, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Index.
