Winter Holidays

By Craig R. Johnson

While holiday sales overall were solid during the season just ended, a real bright spot was online where sales advanced 13% to a record level of nearly $31 billion, according to the online measurement firm comScore. For the 56-day period from Nov. 1 through Dec. 26, comScore data showed consumers turned to the Internet in record numbers, especially on such key days as Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and the final day of free shipping on Dec.17 when online volumes surged 61% to $942 million.

NEW YORK - Barnes & Noble reported preliminary bookstore holiday comparable-store sales of 9.7% for the nine-week period ending Jan. 1. Driven by the company’s Nook e-reading device product line, Barnes & Noble bookstores said it achieved its largest retail sales day ever in the company’s nearly 40-year history on December 23, 2010. 

Target.com was second only to Walmart.com in terms of the number of unique visitors its website attracted this holiday season, and as such is well positioned to capture a large share of this year’s record online spending. Total online holiday sales advanced 13% to nearly $31 billion, according to the online measurement firm comScore. For the 56-day period beginning Nov. 1 through Dec.

LANDOVER, Md. — Giant Food is helping customers stick to their New Year resolutions by emphasizing its product labeling system.

Healthy Ideas, which initially launched in January 2009, identifies healthy options for customers as they shop the aisles, and includes both perishable and nonperishable items, as well as private-label and national brands.

MINNEAPOLIS - Target has created a new way for parents to share news about their new baby. The company last week announced the launch of its Big Baby Billboard, an interactive online experience that includes an outdoor presence in New York City and Los Angeles. For a limited time, parents can visit the Target Baby Facebook page to create a playful digital birth announcement that can be shared online with family and friends, the company reported. Target said it will then randomly select birth announcements for display in New York City's Times Square (through Jan.

Holiday shoppers continued to unleash three years of pent-up demand as the season winds up, on their way to setting a new record of over $521B, blasting through 2007’s pre-recession record of $508 billion, according to Customer Growth Partners. Based on CGP’s proprietary mall surveys and government retail data -- and despite Sunday’s Northeast blizzard -- the sales growth confirmed CGP’s +5% holiday sales forecast. [CGP’s data include e-commerce, unlike NRF, which excludes the same.]

Due to the blizzard in New York City and resulting travel delays, the deadline for entries in Chain Store Age’s 29th annual Retail Store of the Year design competition has been extended until Tuesday, January 4, 2011.

For more information/entry form, go to chainstoreage.com/retail-store-year-0 or e-mail [email protected].