Black Friday data spurs more questions than answers
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Thanksgiving weekend was a chaotic one -- not only for shoppers braving the crowds in search of discount prices, but also for investors trying to determine what actually transpired at the cash register.
Reports released in the days after Thanksgiving painted a conflicting picture of the weekend, seen as the official start of the U.S. holiday shopping season.
Shoppers interviewed by Reuters and industry pollsters said they were spending less. Retail analysts said traffic in stores confirmed their view that holiday sales might fall this year.
But on Sunday, the National Retail Federation, a retail industry trade group, released a survey saying that total spending for the four-day holiday weekend jumped an estimated 18 percent to $41 billion. The survey, conducted by BIGresearch, also found that shoppers said they spent an average of 7.2 percent more per person.
The strength of the NRF figures was unexpected given that consumers have been contending with a nearly yearlong recession and shown an increasing unwillingness, or inability, to spend as the year draws to a close.
October sales at U.S. retail chains open at least a year fell 0.7 percent according to Thomson Reuters, the weakest month since the company began collecting data in 2000. November same-store sales are forecast to fall 2.5 percent.
"The big question going into Black Friday was: Are people going to go out and shop," said NRF spokesman Scott Krugman of the results of the survey. "While we don't know what sales are, this survey at least supports the premise that people did at least go out and shop."
Others questioned how much the survey could be relied uponto gauge the strength of the holiday shopping season kick-off.
"There's very, very weak correlation with what people say they're going to do and what they actually do," said Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of quantitative research firm Fusion IQ, who criticized the figures on his blog, The Big Picture.
INCREASED FOCUS ON BLACK FRIDAY SALES
Retailers count on the holiday season for as much as 40 percent of their annual sales. The Thanksgiving weekend can account for 10 percent of their total holiday sales.
To win early sales, retailers offered deals on their websites on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, and then cut prices early on Friday, known as Black Friday, to attract shoppers.
Investors were closely watching for weekend results this year as a gauge of both retail and overall economic health. Analysts questioned whether shoppers could be enticed to spend and said retailers may need to roll out steeper price cuts closer to Christmas at the expense of margins.
In an early read on the weekend, ShopperTrak said on Saturday that Black Friday sales rose 3 percent to $10.6 billion. That was a slowdown from the prior year when sales on that day rose 8.3 percent.
ShopperTrak derives its sales forecast based in part on the number of shoppers in stores, which it monitors at more than 50,000 retail locations. Continued...
