Budgets/Spending/Market Size

Austin, Texas – Consumers who didn’t get what they wanted for the holidays are taking matters into their own hands. According to new research from digital deals site RetailMeNot, 81% of consumers plan to shop end-of-year sales.   Of these shoppers taking advantage of post-holiday savings, more than half (63%) plan to shop for themselves. Millennials are especially interested in after-Christmas sales, as 92% of respondents 18 to 34 years old said they plan to shop during this time.    

New York - Retail sales in the United States increased 5.5% from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, fueled by demand for women's apparel, jewelry and dining out, according to MastyerCard Advisors. Spending Pulse holiday report. Consumer electronics, which many industry analysts had predicted would be among the strongest categories this holiday season, was actually among the weakest, according to the report, with sales "basically flat" from Black Friday to Dec. 24 and in negative territory starting on Nov. 1. 

Retailers expected online sales to hit record levels in 2014 and did they ever.

New all-time highs for e-commerce sales are now expected for the November through December time frame following a strong surge in sales during the final week before Christmas, according to the digital measurement firm comScore.

San Jose, Calif. – “Super Saturday,” the Saturday before Christmas (Dec. 20), was not quite super for retailers expecting a sales bonanza. According to data from in-store analytics provider RetailNext, compared to the equivalent date in 2013, net sales were down 9%, store traffic was down 10.6%, total transactions fell 8% and average transaction value was 0.9% lower.   However, there were a couple of bright spots. Conversion rate rose 0.4 percentage points and sales per shopper increased 1.8%.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Spend on prepaid gift cards is on the rise this holiday season, as a significant majority (70%) of shoppers plan to purchase gift cards this season, according to an interim holiday spending report released by Stored Value Solutions, a provider of gift cards and stored value services.   According to the report, 92% of shoppers plan to spend either the same amount or more on gift cards than they spent last year. And for the eighth straight year, gift cards have been the most desired holiday gift.

New York - Retail sales worldwide, including both in-store and Internet purchases, will total nearly $22.5 trillion this year. According to new figures from EMarketer, the global retail market will see steady growth during the next few years, and in 2018, worldwide retail sales will increase 5.5% to reach $28.3 trillion.  

New York – The weekend of Dec. 20-21, which included “Super Saturday” (the last Saturday before Christmas) saw the highest daily back-to-back Internet traffic from online consumer retail shopping activity since tracking began before the Thanksgiving weekend. According to the Verizon Retail Index, average daily traffic was 119 on Saturday and 122 on Sunday.  

Vendors are leaving billions on the table because they forget to market to the chief marketing officer (CMO) rather than just the CIO and IT department.

According to a new study from IHL Group called “Hidden Treasure – The CMO’s Budget in Retail,” in 2015, the amount of IT purchased through the CMO’s budget will amount to $7.5 billion in North America. This figure is nearly as much as will be spent on core POS for 2015, or 12% of all North American IT spend for retail and hospitality in North America.

With 2014 almost over, another holiday shopping season is drawing to a close. The looming question on everyone’s mind, of course, is whether holiday sales managed to live up to the (mostly) positive holiday forecasts from analysts and retail organizations.   

Spokane, Wash. - Over half (57%) of retail respondents have an energy/building management system installed, according to an annual survey by energy and sustainability management  company Ecova.