Mass. Holiday Sales Gains Fall Short
The holiday shopping season treated retailers in Massachusetts well, just not as well as was expected.
Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM), said a survey of 3,500 retailers revealed a 2.76-percent increase in sales in November and December 2012 over the previous year. That fell short of RAM's prediction of 3.5-percent growth and the National Retail Federation's (NRF) expectation of a 4.1-percent growth.
The NRF hasn't released its holiday season results yet.
"Even though the results came in below our projection, they are statistically very close," Hurst wrote in an email. "Given the huge online growth driven in large measure by smartphones, and continued economic uncertainty and slow growth, we are pleased to have beaten last year, and to have beaten it by more than the rate of inflation."
Hurst cited a variety reasons for the slower growth, such as "fiscal cliff" concerns, Internet and smartphone competition and overall slow income growth for consumers.
"The results very much track income growth," he said. "Consumers are much less willing to go into debt for purchases today versus [in] pre-2008 years as evidenced by the predominant use of debit versus credit cards."
Despite there being a gain over last year, the margin by which holiday sales are growing continues to shrink. Sales grew 7 percent in 2010 and 5 percent in 2011 before falling below 3 percent in 2012.
Hurst said he believes consumer confidence includes the factors of family income growth, overall employment growth, home value improvement and 401K value increases.
"Continued flat-to-small growth in those areas translates into a cautious consumer," he said. "If we see better growth this year versus the last few years, 2013 increases will be better than the 2 to 3 percent we will likely see."
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