LITTLE ROCK — The weekend snowstorm that hit much of the eastern part of the nation cut sharply into retail store traffic but boosted online shopping, according to researchers that track shopper activity.
Sales on the Saturday before Christmas, normally one of the busiest shopping days of the year, fell by “a large double-digit percentage” from last year, based on sales tracking done for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group.
Still, the organization said year-over-year sales for the week were up 0.4 percent, boosted by shoppers getting out ahead of the storm and a pick-up in Internet shopping as Christmas delivery deadlines loomed.
The storm blanketed the northern two-thirds of the nation’s eastern seaboard with up to two feet of snow Saturday and Sunday after causing flooding in south Florida on Friday and causing power failures in the Carolinas as it moved north.
The snow disrupted travel in heavily populated cities including Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Philadelphia recorded its second-deepest snowfall on record with 23.2 inches.
Historically, the Saturday before Christmas has been the heaviest in-store shopping day, but has been displaced in recent years by the highly promotional Black Friday day-after-Thanksgiving sales, said Kathy Grannis, spokesman for the National Retail Federation.
“November national retail sales indicate we are on track with where we believe holiday retail sales will end up,” she said. The federation has forecast a 1 percent decline in sales at stores open at least a year, a key measure of success in retailing.
The group forecasts total November-December sales at $437.6 billion.
The International Council of Shopping Centers forecasts a 1 percent gain in same-store sales.
Internet traffic-tracking firm comScore Inc. of Reston, Va., reported a 13 per-cent spike in online sales for the final weekend before Christmas, compared to the same weekend a year ago.
Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, said in a news release the storm helpedproduce $4.8 billion in sales for the week ending Sunday, the heaviest online spending week on record.
“Retailers have been very aggressive with late-season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off,”Fulgoni said.
Edward Weller, retail analyst with ThinkEquity LLC in San Francisco, said in a research note to clients that e-commerce sales, not counting travel, are likely to rise 5 percent.
Dan Fogleman, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, said 24 of the company’s stores were affected in some way by the snowstorm, mostly power failures . All were operational by Monday afternoon, he said.
Road closures in some areas resulted in trucks being rerouted, Fogleman said, but stores were fully restocked by Monday evening.
Business, Pages 27 on 12/23/2009