Hopes are High that Strong November Sales Continue
by Doug Desjardins
Retailers coming off a strong November are hoping to sustain that momentum throughout December and, so far, that seems to be the case.
Or at least it’s the case for online sales, which started the month with a $1-billion sales day on Cyber Monday. For the first week of December, online sales rose 11 percent to $5.15 billion, according to research firm comScore. Though that increase didn’t match the 16% jump in sales generated on Cyber Monday, it continued to meet or exceed expectations.
“With more than $5 billion in spending this past week, it’s clear that, while deal-seeking shoppers may have driven stronger-than-anticipated spending early in the season, Americans continue to demonstrate a significantly greater willingness to spend online this year,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore.
For the first 40 days of the holiday shopping season (Nov. 1-Dec. 10), comScore estimates online sales increased 12 percent to $22 billion. The company expects heavy spending to continue up until Friday, Dec. 17, the day that typically marks the end of Christmas shopping online. Fulgoni added that online shoppers may go deeper into December this year.
“As consumers become more confident in the reliability of expedited shipping, they are willing to buy online later in the season,” said Fulgoni.
Traditional retailers are also confident they can extend strong sales right though to Christmas.
Upscale retailer Neiman Marcus said it was still experiencing “good full-price selling” well into December and hadn’t started to mark down prices as it had in previous years. Neiman Marcus CEO Karen Katz noted that, while spending isn’t back to pre-recession levels, “the core customer is absolutely back shopping.”
Even specialty retailers – among the hardest-hit during the recession – are optimistic about the final days of the shopping season. “We have a strong product assortment planned for the rest of the holiday season and strong value messages that really differs from weekend to weekend,” said Jim Field, president of the Disney Stores chain. “We have a plan in place for now through Christmas Day.”
Another sign that the sales recovery will last is a rise in consumer confidence. The Thomson-Reuters-University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment jumped from 71.6 at the end of November to 74.2 on Dec. 10, continuing a sustained rise that began in October.
John Long, a retail strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates, said one of the main concerns heading into December was that all the “early Black Friday” sales and other November promotions would cannibalize December sales and put the brakes on the first real momentum retailers have seen in three years.
“It’s difficult to say whether the promotions we saw in November, particularly early in the month, pulled from some of the volume we would be expecting in December,” said Long.
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