CHICAGO, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- 'Twas a week before Christmas and with shoppers' consent, U.S. merchants were busy, sales up 5.5 percent -- from the same period in 2009, retail analysts said.
Retail store sales last weekend totaled $18.83 billion -- a big rise from the same weekend last year, said Chicago's ShopperTrack, which estimates U.S. retail sales. Last year store revenues dropped 6.2 percent that weekend due to a big East Coast snowstorm, which kept shoppers home.
Last weekend's increase included $7.58 billion spent the final Saturday before Christmas, known in the retail industry as Super Saturday, ShopperTrack said.
Foot traffic was up this year by 3 percent.
Online shopping, which outpaced in-store sales, jumped 17 percent last weekend from the same year-ago weekend, marketing research company comScore indicated.
Since Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start of the holiday-shopping season, online sales were up 12 percent to $28.36 billion from $25.3 billion last year, comScore said.
The figures suggest this year's shopping season is on track to be the healthiest in four years, analysts said.
The severe U.S. economic recession, which officially ended in June 2009, began in December 2007.
Many retailers marked down Super Saturday prices to attract last-minute shoppers. The upscale Lord & Taylor specialty department-store chain offered 20 percent off almost the entire store, and Kohl's gave its Kohl's cardholders 15 to 30 percent off all purchases, The New York Times reported.
Many stores ran low on inventory, Sherif Mityas, a partner in the retail practice of the A. T. Kearney consulting firm, told the newspaper.
Retailers such as Best Buy Co. said consumers, whose spending accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy, shied away from big-ticket-item purchases.
