Aided by one extra day in the holiday shopping season, total retail spending between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 rose an estimated 3.6% compared with the same period last year, according to the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report released Monday.
SpendingPulse is an estimate of all national retail and service sales based on aggregate sales activity within the MasterCard payments network. MasterCard Advisors is the consulting firm owned by MasterCard Worldwide.
As a subset of total retail spending, spending on the Internet during the recent holiday sales period rose 15.5% from a year ago, according to the report. “E-commerce spending continues to grow faster compared to other retail categories, as more people become comfortable shopping online and also shopping online during the holidays,” Kamalesh Rao, director of economic research for MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, tells PaymentsSource.
Overall, sales during the final months of the year point to “a modest recovery” from the recession, Rao says. But minus the additional shopping day in this year’s calendar, total retail spending could be readjusted downward by between 2% and 4%, resulting in “relatively flat” results for the year compared with 2008, he notes.
Sales results varied within different retail categories. On the positive side, electronics sales rose 5.9%; jewelry sales, 5.6%; footwear sales, 5%; and men’s apparel sales, 3.9%. But women’s apparel sales were down 0.3%, and non-department store sales declined 2.3%.
The uptick in jewelry sales could signal improving consumer confidence, Rao says. “Luxury items and jewelry tend to sell better when the financial sector improves,” he says. “Typically the majority of jewelry sales take place in the final week of the holiday shopping season, and from what we could see there were some very healthy sales volumes in jewelry this year, as well as modest growth in luxury jewelry.”
