Customer visits to US retailers fall 24 percent

Bloomberg

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Retail sales declined 5.3 percent Dec. 19-21 because of inclement weather and a slowing U.S. economy, Chicago-based research firm ShopperTrak RCT said Wednesday in a statement.

U.S. consumers were working with smaller budgets for holiday gifts this year because of rising unemployment and declining home values. Macy’s and Saks offered discounts of as much as 70 percent to lure shoppers seeking bargains.

"We had that deep drop-off in consumer spending, which propelled the retailers to go into these very competitive pricing wars," said Marshal Cohen, an analyst with NPD Group. "It has a lot to do with the fact that you can get almost anything, anywhere, at any price."

Customers have come to expect discounts, he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Traffic decreased 6.5 percent for the week through Dec. 20 from a year earlier, ShopperTrak said. The pre-Christmas weekend drop was the biggest since at least 2003. The company uses a sampling of more than 50,000 stores in shopping centers and malls to measure foot traffic, or count the number of customers that enter the locations.

ShopperTrak said Dec. 23 that U.S. customer traffic on Dec. 20, also known as "Super Saturday," fell 17 percent from the corresponding day a year earlier, Dec. 22, 2007. Foot traffic was hurt by the economy, unfavorable weather and a calendar shift, the research firm said. Sales for the day rose 0.5 percent.Consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, dropped at a 3.8 percent annual pace in the third quarter, the biggest plunge since 1980, according to the Commerce Department.