Christmas To Force: Rising Consumption Of Clothing And Luxury Goods In The US

The stores are crowded, and customers open their wallets.

Reappearance of vitality

Data from the data research unit of MasterCard consulting firm, "consumption pulse", show that the consumption of Americans has been fully recovered during the Christmas season, and the consumption of clothing, luxury goods and furniture has increased.

Data show that sales of clothing, jewellery and furniture increased by 9.8%, 2.6% and 3.4% respectively from October 31st to December 18th.

Michael McNamara, vice president of consumption pulse, said: "this is the first normal Christmas in three years."

Dan Jasper, director of public relations at the US mall, the largest shopping mall in the United States, told The Associated Press that about 200 thousand customers entered the shopping mall in Bloomington, Minnesota on the 18 day, making the largest passenger traffic this year and one of the largest passenger traffic in history.

Taubman mall spokesman Karen MacDonald said the company is located in 26 stores in the United States, and many passenger traffic has increased in recent days.

Mcnamara said that there is no sign of immediate discounts, and the stock of goods is at an appropriate level.

Rational consumption

Robin Lewis, chief executive of the Robin report, a retail research firm, said three factors contributed to the recovery of Christmas consumption.

One is that consumers do not pay much in installments, the two is a slight decrease in savings rate, and the three is extended working hours.

Lewis said, "these three items make people have more dollars in their pockets."

However, in many ways, the consumption level of Christmas this year is not as high as before the recession began in December 2007.

Mcnamara expects furniture consumption to be 20% lower than before the recession and sales of luxury goods and jewellery will drop by about 10%.

Clothing sales, by contrast, recovered faster.

Consumers clearly remember the lesson of the recession this year: stick to the budget with cash, no credit cards.

Richard Jaffe, an economist, said: "consumers are not blindly returning, and they have become rational."

The National Retail Federation said that about half of the shopping activities were not completed as the weekend approached.

Last week, the Federation increased its holiday sales forecast to an increase of 3.3%, close to the 2007 level.

The agency's earlier forecast increased by 2.3%.

Online shopping

Christmas online shopping is also strong.

IBM's Internet Business Analytics company Coremetrics data showed that on the 18 "super Saturday", online retail sales increased by 18% over the same period last year, with an average increase of 4% to 169 dollars per order.

The last Saturday before Christmas is usually the same as the peak of the annual sales peak, which the US retailers call "super Saturday".

Data also showed that consumers spent $27 billion 460 million online from November 1st to December 17th, an increase of 12% over the same period last year.

Research firm comScore said Apple Corp's iPad tablet computers and various laptops and other hardware promoted holiday spending.