US retailers eked out a 2.3 per cent sales gain on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, in line with a prediction for the weakest holiday results since 2009. Sales at brick-and-mortar stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday rose to $12.3 billion, according to a report yesterday from ShopperTrak.
The researcher reiterated its prediction that sales for the entire holiday season will gain 2.4 per cent, the smallest increase since the last recession. Retailers offered more and steeper deals on merchandise from flat-screen televisions to crockpots that, while luring shoppers, may ultimately hurt fourth-quarter earnings.
Many consumers showed up prepared to zero in on their favoured items while shunning the impulse buys that help retailers’ profits.
“You could get the same deals online as you could get in the store, and yet there were still a ton of people out there,” Charles O’Shea, a senior analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in New York, said. Going out to stores, “is part of the experience”, he said.
Planned
About 97 million people planned to shop online or in stores on Black Friday, with about 140 million intending to do so Thanksgiving through Sunday, the National Retail Federation said. That's down from 147 million last year.
With more stores opening on Thanksgiving, sales were pulled forward from Black Friday, Bill Martin, ShopperTrak’s founder, said. Sales on Black Friday fell 13.2 per cent from last year. – (Bloomberg)
