Christmas Shopping Started Earliest Yet
Mastercard SpendingPulse reports U.S. Retail Sales Grew 3.0% This Holiday Season excluding autos and gas.
Key Shopping Details
- This season, U.S. consumers shopped far earlier than in years past, as retailers offered special promotions early and often.
- Holiday retail sales excluding automotive and gasoline increased 3.0% this expanded holiday season, running from October 11 through December 24
- Black Friday was down (-16.1% but remained the top spending day of the 2020 holiday season..
- Online sales grew 49.0% compared to 2019, the preliminary insights show.
- Home furniture and furnishings experienced the strongest growth of any sector compared to 2019, up 16.2%, and it grew 31.0% online specifically. In addition, home improvement was up 14.1%, with e-commerce sales up 79.7%.
- Apparel experienced a decline of 19.1% year over year
- Electronics and appliances were up 6.0% overall.
- Department stores saw overall sales decline of 10.2%.
- Buy online, pick up in store as well as technologies like contactless were key for retailers this season.
SpendingPulse measures overall retail spending trends across all payment types, including cash and check.
Top 10 Days November
Top 10 Days December
Apples vs Oranges
The report added an extra 21 days to the shopping season this year.
At a minimum, by extending the season three weeks earlier into October, SpendingPulse likely introduced Covid-related issues including school artifacts.
I would rather the report compared November and December rather than changing the shopping season.
Mish
We spent $10K this year on 2 TVs and sound systems. We switched from plasma to OLED technology.
I am surprised that electronic sales were not up by more as so many electronic items are “not in stock”.
Larry Summers says $600 or $2000 check to consumers is a bad idea. Supposedly overheat the economy. So $100 billion to people is not good but the $300 or $400 Billion or more to Businesses is okay?
All my shopping this year was from Etsy. Everything from a scarf to a replica cannon.
The best gift I got was an on-line subscription of Geographical (the Royal Geographic Society magazine) which includes access to the past 80 years of issues. Check it out at Exact Editions.com. I like going through the old articles and pictures and the old ads are pretty insformative also.
We’re home , scared and bored. So we eat and shop online.
I moved out of the city, and gave most of my furniture to a family that had their house burn down. I have been spending a stupid amount of money replacing it.
My first apt I bought shit furniture. Fell apart after a few years. When I moved to my current place 18 years ago I went high end. Everything is pristine except for the couch I lay on too much and my housekeeper decided she could throw the covers into the washing machine