According to Action Economics’ Survey, this year’s pre-holiday sales predictions by economists were at about a 0.4% increase over last year’s sales. With increased hours on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday, and lots of advertising for Cyber Monday, customers were expected to take advantage of early sales promotions and spend more. Did this happen? Hadley Malcolm reports in a USA Today article titled Retail Sales Jump in November that this is exactly what happened.
The increase was not just 0.4%, it was 0.7%! Strong gains in autos, building materials, and clothing stores helped make this the largest gain since March. The holiday season appears to have gotten off to a great start! Part of this gain might be attributed to falling gas prices, which frees up consumers’ discretionary spending.
Despite this early reporting, National Retail Federation says fewer people shopped over the Black Friday weekend, indicating that consumers might be holding back. Even though gas prices are falling, a Bankrate.com survey of 1,001 adults finds 82% of Americans don’t plan to spend more this holiday season.
With deals starting earlier and spread out over a longer period of time, some consumers may still have much shopping to do for the rest of the season. With this in mind, this could be the strongest holiday season since 2006.
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