Winter Holidays

New York -- Shopper sentiment tracker NetBase said that, since Black Friday, it has been tracking the changes in shopper moods for 10 retailers with its Holiday Shopping Mood Meter.

The company found that Kohl’s was No. 1 more often than Amazon, Walmart was the only brand with a net negative sentiment, and Old Navy broke the Top 5 only once.

Nashville, Tenn. -- Genesco Inc. said Friday its third-quarter profit increased to $41 million, from $26.2 million in the year-ago period, better than Wall Street expected. The company also raised its fiscal 2013 outlook, even as it warned that November was off to a slow start.

Chicago-based General Growth Properties has unveiled a major holiday mall-marketing program, offering up $30,000 worth of prizes for shoppers nationwide.

Coined the 12.12.12 Days of Gifts, the national sweepstakes launches Dec. 1 and continues through Dec. 12, prompting shoppers to visit their local GGP mall’s website or Facebook page for a chance to win a prize each day. The grand prize is a $12,000 Shop Etc. Gift Card.

Same store sales in November at Target plunged unexpectedly while apparel discounters and Costco kept humming and Kroger extended its string of consecutive comp increases to nine years.

The nations second largest grocer this week reported a third quarter profit, excluding some non-recurring items, of 46 cents that was three cents better than analysts forecast and its identical store sales increased by 3.2%. Total sales including fuel for the period increased 5.9% to $21.8 billion.

A worse than expected 1% decline in November same store sales indicates the holiday season is off to a slow start at Target.

The 1% decline was substantially worse than the low single digit increase the company forecast at the start of the month when it reported a 2.4% increase for October that was toward the low end of guidance. The November weakness suggest traffic trends may be deteriorating at Target as the company said blamed the decline on a decrease in comparable store transactions following that metric’s flat performance in October.

Atlanta -- Year-over-year retail dollar volume growth on Thanksgiving and Black Friday was healthy at 5.6% as many retailers started the holiday shopping season earlier this year and consumers welcomed the opportunity to find bargains, according to a study by First Data Corp.’s First Data SpendTrend analysis for Black Friday 2012 compared with Black Friday 2011. (SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT, closed-loop prepaid cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations.)

New York -- Many retailers blamed Hurricane Sandy for weak sales in November, although some companies were buoyed later in the month by a long Thanksgiving weekend.

Eighteen retailers reported that sales in November through last Saturday were up 1.7% compared with the year-ago period, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. That is below the anticipated forecast for a 4.5% to 5.5% gain.

New York -- Facebook said referral traffic to retail sites from Facebook on Cyber Monday increased 240%, compared to average referral traffic for the last several Mondays.

Among  U.S. retailers, Walmart, Toys “R” Us, Macy’s, Amazon and Converse were the five most talked-about brands on Black Friday, according to Facebook’s People Talking About metric.