Spending: holiday shoppers have brought retailers a mildly positive season.
Spending through Dec. 19 is tracking a little below the 1.6 percent growth
forecast by shoppertrak, a research firm that monitors sales
and traffic at more than 50,000 outlets. Sales had been in line with modest
expectations but were derailed by the winter storm that slammed the east coast this
past weekend.
Stores on making up the sales loss in the final surge in the days before Christmas.
Discounts: retailers offered lots of aggressive promotions heading into the
season.
However, they didn't order nearly as much merchandise as last year, so they
didn't have cut prices drastically beyond what they had planned. Many shoppers
with memories of last year were left waiting for 80 percent or 90 percent
discounts that never came.
Retailer profits: those low inventories should protect
retailers' bottom lines, a big turnaround from a
last year's bleak holidays that led prominent sellers like circuit city stores inc. into bankruptcy
Those facts weren't what I thought after shopping at the malls over the past month, but maybe all those people were just there to hang out and bother all us shoppers. Now here is a funny video to completely distract you:
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