Winter Holidays

Camp Hill, Pa. — As expected, Hurricane Sandy left its mark on Rite Aid's monthly sales as the chain reported a decline in comps for November.

The company said the 3% decrease in same-store sales for the five-week period ended Saturday included a 0.5% decrease in front-end comps and a 4.2% decrease in pharmacy comps, while same-store prescription count increased 2.2% compared with the same time last year.

New York — Last-minute holiday shoppers will have some help from Macy’s this year, as the retailer plans keep most of its stores open 48 hours straight the weekend before Christmas, from 7 a.m. Dec. 21 through 7 a.m. on Dec. 23.

The 48-hour shopping marathon coincides with Macy’s final scheduled One-Day Sale of the year, which concludes at 7 a.m., Dec. 23. While the sale ends Sunday morning, 57 stores will remain open 24 hours or offer extended late hours until close on Christmas Eve.

Reston, Va. -- Online holiday spending reached $21.4 billion for first 32 days of the November-December shopping season, up 14% year-over-year, according to comScore.

The most recent week saw three individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.46 billion. However, growth rates softened considerably in the wake of Cyber Monday and through the weekend.       

Portland, Maine -- CashStar found in its latest survey that nearly 56 million adult online Americans are likely to forget to buy a gift for their mail carriers and nearly 44 million are likely to forget to buy a gift for their neighbors.

The survey, conducted online nationwide by Harris Interactive on behalf of CashStar, examined when online American adults remember to buy gifts and who they end up forgetting.

Chicago -- A report on Wednesday from ShopperTrak showed that retail foot traffic increased 3.7% and sales increased 2.3% year-over-year for the week beginning Nov. 25, ending Dec. 1.

This represented a 28.8% decline in traffic and 22.4% decline in sales from the 2012 Black Friday shopping week.  

Washington, D.C. --  Retailers will lose an estimated $8.9 billion to return fraud this year, and $2.9 billion during the holiday season alone, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 Return Fraud Survey. Overall, retailers estimate 4.6% of holiday returns are fraudulent.

Framingham, Mass. -- A survey by Staples of 1,000 American shoppers revealed that the majority tend to wait until the last minute to mail holiday gifts.

The Staples Winter Holiday Survey found that two-thirds of those polled confessed to sending holiday cards out too late and nearly half admitted to shipping gifts at the last minute.

ATLANTA — Home Depot has added Samsung to its portfolio of leading appliance brands, which already includes Whirlpool, LG, GE, GE Profile, Maytag, Frigidaire, Electrolux and Adora.

The home improvement retailer will carry Samsung appliances at its more than 2,000 stores nationwide and online beginning Sunday, December 9.