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Shopping gains modest
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November 27, 2001: 9:38 a.m. ET
Purchases up slightly as retailers hit conservative goals for season.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. chain-store sales increased 0.9 percent last week, erasing the decline of the previous week and reflecting mixed sales at the start of the crucial holiday shopping season, according to an industry report released Tuesday.
Major sales and extended store hours just after Thanksgiving, typically the start of the holiday shopping season, helped boost consumer spending, according to a weekly report from the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UBS Warburg.
Sales were generally mixed relative to retailers' expectations, with discount chains mostly beating their plans and department stores coming in below plan.
Separately, check acceptance company TeleCheck said its survey of check purchases at 27,000 locations nationwide show that sales were up 2.3 percent compared with purchases at the same location a year earlier over the three-day Thanksgiving weekend. While slightly narrower than the 2.4 percent increase posted on Friday alone, the pace was modestly above the 2 percent rate that TeleCheck forecast in advance of the holiday.
"For the most part, spending continued steadily throughout the weekend," said William Ford, TeleCheck's senior economic adviser. "It is not unusual to see a slight slowdown in sales after an initial surge on the day after Thanksgiving -- particularly with a long shopping season." Ford said to look for the biggest shopping push the week before Christmas.
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Nadia Mitchell, right, and her mother Hamida Mitchell, stuff five bags filled with linens from Macy's department store into the trunk of a taxi cab Friday in New York. | |
Though the day after Thanksgiving is no longer the busiest shopping day of the year, it is still among the busiest. The Saturday before Christmas is now the busiest day.
Foot traffic at shopping malls on Friday, Saturday and Sunday fell 7.4 percent from 2000, while the number of people shopping in department stores fell by 11.7 percent, according to Chicago-based RCT Systems, which tracks mall traffic at 200 malls and 800 department stores for retailers.
"I think the traffic looked good. Most retailers are saying for that day or that weekend that they were on plan, with on plan being they have lowered their expectations, but it's looking like they're going to meet them," said Sarah Scheuer, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation, a major industry trade group. "I think we're going to see it ramp back up as we get closer and closer."
Discount chain Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT: Research, Estimates), the world's largest retailer, posted record single-day sales of $1.25 billion on Friday. But those sales were actually at the lower end of a range of expectations. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said home electronics, toys and small appliances were among top sellers.
Click here for CNN/Money special report on holiday shopping
Other major retailers reported more modest gains. Federated Department Stores Inc. (FD: Research, Estimates), the parent of Macy's and Bloomingdale's, said Monday it "was pleased with sales over the weekend, which was a fine start to the holiday season."
For the month of November, Federated expects sales at its stores open at least a year, a closely watched retail measure known as same-store sales, to range from a decline of 2 percent to a gain of 1 percent.
J.C. Penney Co. (JCP: Research, Estimates) said sales during the week started slow but improved Friday. The retailer noted good sales of home furnishings and men's and women's clothing.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. (S: Research, Estimates) said its domestic same-store sales were up slightly on
Friday and Saturday.
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Wal-Mart and some other discount chains have reported improved same-store sales since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, while some other retail chains, particularly apparel retailers, have seen same-store sales fall.
"So far, this has turned out to be the year's great bargain hunt," said Kurt Barnard, president of industry publication Barnard's Retail Trend Report. "Consumers are hunting for bargains and finding them."
Though steep discounts are helping to drive sales, they are also likely to dampen retailers' bottom lines in the fourth quarter.
"I think we're generally going to see people meeting expectations this year," Jefferey Klinefelter, senior retail analyst at US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, told CNNfn's Before Hours Monday. "I think we're in good shape in terms of investing, I just think it's going to be very volatile in the next couple of weeks until the anxiety dissipates a little bit and we get more visibility for the back-end loaded month of December." 
From staff and wire reports
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