- NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sales
at U.S. chain stores faltered last week as consumers, worried by a weak
economy and scarce jobs, stayed away from shopping malls, while icy weather
in parts of the country also chilled sentiment.
-
- The drop was seen as a worrying omen for the remainder
of the crucial holiday shopping season, which accounts for over one quarter
of retailers' yearly revenues, analysts said.
-
- Chain store sales plunged 2.3 percent in the week to
Dec. 7 from the previous week -- the sharpest such fall in two years --
after a 0.3 percent gain in the preceding week, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
and UBS Warburg said in a joint report.
-
- Meanwhile sales, according to Instinet Research's weekly
Redbook report, grew 0.6 percent in the first week of December compared
with the same November period but were below most retailers' plans for
the start of the month.
-
- "'It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas,'
as the saying goes, but unfortunately, right now, it is looking a lot like
Christmas 2000, which was a dismal season," Mike Niemira, senior economist
at BTM, said in the report.
-
- "You worry about these parallels," Niemira
told Reuters.
-
- Last Friday, the government reported that 40,000 Americans
lost their jobs in November, raising the national unemployment rate to
6 percent from 5.7 percent in October.
-
- Some analysts cautioned chain store sales reports do
not account for online sales which, while still a nascent market, are growing
rapidly.
-
- A report published on Tuesday by comScore Networks, a
research firm that focuses on online spending patterns, showed U.S. consumers
spent a record $2 billion online during the post-Thanksgiving week, a 34
percent jump from last year.
-
- "If the brick and mortar guys are looking around
for customers, they may be home online," said Peter Kastner, chief
research officer at Aberdeen Group, a market research firm based in Boston.
-
- He predicted that online sales would grow around 15 percent
this holiday season compared to last, while sales at retail stores are
only set to expand about 2 percent.
-
- BTM's sales index, which reflects overall sales volume,
fell to 392.8 on the week, the lowest reading in a year, from 402.0 in
the prior week.
-
- "Retailers described the week as a lull that began
over the weekend after a hectic (for some) post-Thanksgiving surge,"
the Redbook report said.
-
- The Bank-of-Tokyo Mitsubishi and UBS Warburg Weekly Chain
Store Sales Snapshot looks at sales on a week-to-week basis and is compiled
from seven major discount, department and chain stores across the country
that report their weekly results.
-
- The weekly Redbook Retail Sales Average, released by
Instinet Research, is a sales-weighted average of year-on-year sales growth
at discount, department and chain stores open at least a year. Seasonally
adjusted month-to-month changes are derived from dollar sales estimates.
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