Seasonal

New York City -- According to Chain Store Age columnist Jeff Green’s latest editorial, one of the most noteworthy trends of this holiday season was the robust performance of independent retailers.

What could this mean for retail real estate? Click here to read more.

Target may have floundered a bit in December, but many retailers reported solid sales gains for the month. Overall, retail sales rose 3.4% at the 22 retailers tracked by the Thomson Reuters same-store sales index, compared with the 3.3% analyst forecast, however results were mixed.

That was the case with the nation’s discounters and department store retailers, with many chains citing unseasonably warm weather that sapped demand for cold-weather merchandise.

Dallas -- Zale Corp. reported Tuesday that same-store sales for the holiday selling season of November and December 2011 rose 5.9%, compared with an 8.5% gain in the same period last year.

Within the two-month period, same-store store sales increased 10.1% in November and 4.2% in December.

Revenues for the two-month period were $564 million, compared with $533 million in the same period last year, an increase of 5.8%.

Paso Robles, Calif. -- Daily Systems said Tuesday that college bookstore chain Nebraska Book Co. has implemented its iAPS payment sled for iPhone and iPod touch, which will enable NBC to sell merchandise in seasonal pop-up stores that are set up close to the dorms in the beginning of the semester.

Undaunted by the reality that two months into the fourth quarter same-store sales have failed to materialize at the pace originally envisioned, Target is sticking with guidance that calls for a low- to mid- single-digit increase in January.

Well, the holidays are finally over and the verdict is in: Retailers reported a 3.5% year-over-year sales increase in December — that’s better than I thought we would see — and a 3.3% increase overall for the season. While slightly more than some analysts anticipated (myself included!), it wasn’t the happiest holiday for everyone. Certain sectors (electronics) and brands (Macy’s, Nordstrom) did better than expected, while others (Target and J.C. Penney) did worse.

Armonk, N.Y. -- On Tuesday, IBM released its final Benchmark announcement for the 2011 holiday season, detailing a continued strong performance for mobile as well as an overall increase in online spending for December 2011.

According to the report, the U.S. online retail sector delivered 7.5% growth in December 2011 compared to the same period last year. This followed a strong November where both Black Friday 2011 and Cyber Monday 2011 delivered double-digit growth over 2010.

Other key findings of the IBM report included:

Following a wild ride during Black Friday, the last month of the year in 2011 saw most retailers maintaining similar levels of promotional activities when compared to 2010. The majority of advertisers either saw slight increases in circular and page counts or stayed flat. When looking at both page counts and circular drops overall there was not much change, with a 2% decrease in number of pages and a 1% drop in number of inserts per market.