US Holiday Shopping Starts with $8 Billion Day
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Americans spent more in stores at the start of holiday shopping than a year ago, according to figures released on Saturday, but retailers&#39; hopes for the key season
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The post-Thanksgiving rush to US stores has begun, with bargain hunters taking advantage of seasonal discounts.
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The department store chain is gaining momentum going into the holiday season.
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BAGHDAD -- The customers may be thousands of miles away from their homes and families in America, but on US military bases in Iraq the holiday shopping season has arrived, and business is booming.
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Online consumers in the United  States spent $8.8 billion, excluding travel purchases, in  November, a 19 percent jump over the $7.4 billion spent online  a year earlier, a report released on Monday said.
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A rosier economic outlook will boost US holiday spending by up to 5 percent this year despite a firm resolution by many consumers to spend less, a consumer group said on Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - The 2006 holiday shopping period got off to a strong start over the weekend, according to several e-commerce operators. The Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday is typically seen as the start of the holiday sales season in the U.S. and retail outlets across the nation see some of the largest crowds of the year on that day. In recent years, online retailers also report strong traffic on the day. While consumers may be opening their wallets to online retailers like never before, there's also evidence they are after bargains like never before. Two online price comparison sites, which point consumers to the lowest prices for various items, reported surging traffic. Pricegrabber.com said it's seen a 45 percent increase year-over-year in referrals to merchants for November to date. In some categories, including toys, sporting goods and apparel, the amount of traffic sent to retailers by Pricegrabber has more than doubled, it said. Rival site Shopping.com reported a 40 percent jump in November-to-date referrals to online retailers and said hot categories include kids and family, home and garden, and clothing and accessories. Despite the strong traffic, Monday is likely to be busier, said Shopping.com. Last year visitors to the site peaked between noon and 2 p.m. on Monday. Two of the season's hottest holiday gift items, the recently-launched PlayStation 3 and Wii games consoles, have been selling fast on Ebay. In the week to Nov. 24, 14,675 PlayStation 3 and 26,708 Wii consoles were sold through the site. The average price of the PS3 was US$1,186.39 while the Wii fetched an average $412.53, according to eBay Marketplace Research. Both prices are well above their suggested retail prices. Other hot electronics items include the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. BDP-1000 Blu-ray Disc player and Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod nano and iPod Shuffle, the company said.
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Business & money: Festive week sees 8% jump on previous year with record takings on first  day of January sale
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Americans stormed the nation&#39;s shops on Friday after US Thanksgiving Day at the start of the holiday shopping season, lured by cut-price toys, consumer electronics and Santa.
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especially to the electronics industry. This is the time of year when companies begin releasing their shiniest/newest/greatest products to compete for your holiday shopping dollar.
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hoAs the holiday season wound down, U.S. residents kept on shopping significantly more than they did in 2006, particularly on the day after Christmas, but they also reported being less satisfied with e-tailers, according to a pair of studies.Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 27 -- the first 57 days of the holiday season -- U.S. shoppers spent almost $28 billion in online retail purchases, up 19 percent compared with the same period in 2006, according to comScore.Shoppers spent $545 million on Dec. 26, more than doubling the spending on that day in 2006, as they took advantage of late-season offers and discounts, according to comScore.Still, it looks like online spending growth for the 2007 holiday season will fail to meet comScore&#39;s 20 percent forecast, and fall way below the 26 percent growth registered during this period in 2006.comScore chalks up the smaller-than-expected growth to several factors, including warm weather in early November and various economic challenges this year, including higher gas prices, the real estate crunch, and a &quot;jittery&quot; stock market, the company said Sunday.Another important metric that dropped this holiday season compared with 2006&#39;s was customer satisfaction, according to ForeSee Results, a provider of online customer-satisfaction measurement services.A survey of more than 11,000 shoppers revealed that, on a 100-point scale, customer satisfaction with the largest 40 e-tailers dropped, in aggregate, to 74 points, down 1.3 points from the 2006 holiday season, according to ForeSee. It conducted the survey in conjunction with FGI Research using the methodology of the University of Michigan&#8217;s American Customer Satisfaction Index.Still, the spending growth in online shopping this holiday season, even at 19 percent, would greatly outpace the growth of overall U.S. retail holiday spending, forecast at 4 percent by the National Retail Federation.That 4 percent growth rate -- which would put 2007 holiday season retail spending in the United States at almost $475 billion -- would fall below the 10-year average of 4.8 percent and be the slowest since 2002, according to the National Retail Federation.
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The National Retail Federation, a trade group in Washington, estimated that the Thanksgiving weekend accounted for $22.8 billion in sales.
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By Lisa Baertlein and Emily Chasan SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - U.S. online shoppers, who set spending and traffic records on Thanksgiving Day and the "Black Friday" that followed, were expected to break new ground again as they returned to work on what some are calling "Blue Monday."
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Record purchases of gift tokens and online presents drove up preliminary consumer spending estimates in the US on Monday but clouded attempts to predict retail store sales.
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DISPLAY WINDOWS for holiday shoppers can be found more and more on 17-inch computer screens. The number of Americans who regularly use the Internet for shopping rose dramatically this year, with one market
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U.S. leading in online video retail sales, which will exceed $3.8 billion by 2011.
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In fact, more than half of people in a recent survey (51 percent) said they&#39;d done holiday gift shopping while on vacation, spending an average of $2,000.