Data & Analytics

New York -- eMarketer projects that retail e-commerce holiday sales in the U.S. will rise about 15% again this year, matching last year's gains. In total, U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the holiday season — defined as November and December — are expected to reach $61.8 billion, up from $53.7 billion last year, according to the report.
 
As well, eMarketer estimates US retail e-commerce sales will grow 16.4% to $262.3 billion this year, with 23.5% ($61.8 billion) of this taking place in November and December.

This year's November had one additional Saturday and one fewer Thursday compared with November 2012. Despite these calendar shifts, Walgreens still saw comparable store sales climb for the month.

The company reported November sales of $6.1 billion, an increase of 4.1% compared to the same month last year. Total front-end sales increased 3.2%, while comparable store front-end sales increased 1.9%. Customer traffic in comparable stores increased 0.8% and basket size increased 1.1%.

There were more than 1 billion page views on Walmart.com from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which the retailer said made for record sales.

Walmart said Cyber Monday 2013 was the biggest online sales day in its history and that the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday was the highest five-day stretch in online sales to date, but stopped short of disclosing actual sales results.

New York -- Dunkin’ Donuts is the chain with the most locations in New York City, operating 515 stores across the five boroughs, according to The Center for an Urban Future’s sixth annual “State of the Chains” study. Subway is the second largest national retailer in the city with 467 locations. Rounding out the top ten are: Duane Reade/Walgreens (with 318 stores), Starbucks (283), MetroPCS (261), McDonalds (240), Baskin Robbins (202), Rite Aid (190), T-Mobile (161) and GNC (138).

Suffern, N.Y. – Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant and Justice, reported net income of $52.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, a 22% increase from $43.1 million a year earlier.

Net sales totaled roughly $1.2 billion, a 5% increase from about $1.14 billion.

 Chicago -- When compared to “Black Weekend” last year, brick-and-mortar retail sales between Thanksgiving and Sunday, Dec. 1 increased 1% as shoppers spent an estimated total of $22.2 billion across the four days. However, retail shopper traffic decreased by 4%, to an estimated 1.8 billion store visits, according to new data from ShopperTrak.

Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant, Dressbarn and Justice, may have just reported same store sales growth across all its formats and achieved Thanksgiving weekend sales objectives, but president and CEO David Jaffe remains cautious in his outlook for the remainder of the holiday season.

As so many other retailers have noted in recent weeks, Jaffe said this year’s highly competitive, promotional and compressed holiday season makes it difficult to know how the next few weeks will play out, despite the company’s recent performance.

By Connor Marsden, U.S. Lead, Microsoft Dynamics CRM