Holiday Season Off to Modest Start

NEW YORK -- The Thanksgiving shopping weekend doesn't appear to have been the disaster some had feared, but consumers' tempered buying and stores' unprecedented deep discounts are likely to result in sales that at best met retailers' low expectations.

Now, the nation's merchants are struggling to find other tricks to entice financially strapped shoppers for the rest of the holiday shopping season, expected to be the weakest in decades.

"The consumer clearly is showing us that there is a holiday to be had, but the consumer wants bigger deals. And they are not panicking," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, a market research group. "They're willing to wait it out at almost any price."
Cohen predicts sales for the weekend, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, were at best even with the same holiday weekend a year ago.

New York-based retail consultant Walter Loeb said he expects sales for the weekend to be below year-ago levels, based on discussions this weekend with key executives from discounters and department stores.

But he added, "It wasn't as bad as some feared. ... People were buying, but they bought cheap, and the results were not as good."

Loeb, like many analysts who predict a rare contraction in spending for the holidays from a year ago, expects a 1% drop in total retail sales for the November and December period, compared with the year-ago period.

Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman at Taubman Centers, which operates 24 malls in 11 states, said that based on a sampling of malls, business on Friday was anywhere from unchanged to up mid-single digits. But on Saturday, sales were unchanged to down slightly.