Online sales rise as temps take dive
Last full shopping weekend a ‘perfect storm’ for retailers
Charisse Jones @charissejones USA TODAY
As temperatures plummeted, retailers’ online traffic soared this past weekend as they entered the home stretch of the holiday shopping season.
The last full weekend before Christmas and the start of Hanukkah proved to be a big winner for online shopping, with online traffic up 11% on Saturday and 16% on Sunday, according to Verizon, which tracked traffic on home-based Internet connections to the 25 largest U.S. online retailers.
Jessica Williams, 31, a psychologist living in South San Francisco, was one of those shoppers who preferred browsing online to visiting the mall.
“I love the convenience of online shopping and not having to deal with lines, parking and limited items,” she said. “I feel that I got better deals online than going inside the stores.”
And given the wintry blast that gripped much of the nation, buyers were loading up on seasonal clothing, says Planalytics, a firm that measures the impact of weather on consumer behavior.
It forecasts that shoppers will spend at least $350 million more than last year on cold weather gear during December.
“This weekend was the perfect storm,’’ says Michele Du-
pré, Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ group vice president for retail, distribution and hospitality.
“Weather plays a factor,” she said, and retailers “certainly played up the fact it was the last weekend ( before the holidays) and were touting that shipping deadlines were quickly approaching.”
Retailers made it clear that the cutoff to get gifts delivered on time was just around the corner. And the Arctic freeze that engulfed the Northeast and Midwest also raised the likelihood that caps, gloves and jackets had become a hot gift item.
Still, many sought refuge in shopping centers and malls.
“It was not bad enough to keep people away,” said Planalytics President Scott Bernhardt.
This past weekend may be the capstone to a holiday season that some retail watchers now predict could exceed initial expectations, due in part to record-breaking online sales and a dramatic shift by consumers to shopping on smartphones and tablets.
The National Retail Federation, relying on U.S. Census data, says that retail sales increased 5% last month compared to November 2015.
Meanwhile, online sales jumped 15.3% in November vs. last year. Those statistics did not count gas stations, cars or restaurants.
The picture at brick-and mor- tar locations has been a bit less rosy. In-store sales dipped 4.2%, while traffic dropped 4.4% over Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season, according to the analytics firm RetailNext.
The NRF reported that 3.7% fewer consumers shopped at an actual store over that holiday weekend, vs. a 4.2% increase in those who shopped online.