Holiday sales rise is most since ’11
Retailers get their own gift with 4.9% increase
Despite thousands of store closings this year, Americans supplied a final flurry of spending to give retailers their best holiday season sales since 2011, figures released Tuesday show.
U.S. year-end holiday retail sales rose 4.9% compared to the same period last year, a welcome gift to retailers.
Online retail shopping similarly increased 18.1%, while overall consumer buying during the holiday period set a record for dollars spent, according to the sales report issued by Mastercard SpendingPulse.
“Overall, this year was a big win for retail,” Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president of Market Insights, Mastercard, said in a statement. “The strong U.S. economy was a contributing factor, but we also have to recognize that retailers who tried new strategies to engage holiday shoppers were the beneficiaries of this sales increase.”
Although the report showed the 2017 holiday shopping season from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 was a winner for all
retailers, the results differed by category. Retailers that succeeded tapped into:
❚ Home goods. There was no place like home for the holidays for many shoppers, who sent sales of electronics and appliances up 7.5%, the strongest growth of the last 10 years. Sales of home furniture and furnishings separately grew 5.1%. ❚ Heavy early-season promotions. They worked, with the first three weeks of November delivering significant sales increases.
❚ Last-minute shopping. The spending spree lasted late into the holiday season, with last Saturday second only to the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday in terms of single-day spending. Jewelry sales rose 5.9%.
The findings were based on aggregate sales activity in the Mastercard payments network, along with survey based-estimates for other forms of payment, including cash and checks, Mastercard said. Data excludes auto sales.
The results delivered a financial boost to retailers during a year in which dozens of companies sought bankruptcy court protection as they sought to cope with shifting consumer tastes and a continuing shift to e-commerce transactions.
Despite taking the brunt of closings this past year, even specialty apparel and department stores experienced moderate sales gains.
“Unemployment is pretty low. Consumer confidence is high,” said Sucharita Kodali of Forrester Research. “(There’s) disposable income. You can spend it on a piece of sporting equipment, you can upgrade your iPhone or you can buy a Google Home device or whatever it is that interests you.”
Separately, retail e-commerce giant Amazon reported record global shopping, with more than 4 million people starting Amazon Prime free trials or paid memberships in one week alone during the holiday season.
“Retail is absolutely not dead,” Stores magazine editor Susan Reda said in a NRF podcast. “It’s not collapsing, it’s not vanishing. It’s alive and well ... in the middle of this transformation.”