Retail Sales Fell for Fourth Week, ShopperTrak Says

Retail Sales Fell for Fourth Week, ShopperTrak Says

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Sales at U.S. stores fell for the fourth straight week as rising fuel and food prices threatened to hand retailers their worst holiday shopping season in five years.

Spending fell 2.2 percent for the week through Dec. 22 from a year earlier, Chicago-based ShopperTrak RCT Corp. said in a statement today. Discounter Target Corp. said separately that sales at stores open at least a year may decline in December after customer visits slowed following the Thanksgiving holiday.

A 7.6 percent increase on the Saturday before Christmas wasn't enough to lift retailers' revenue last week as shoppers grapple with $3-a-gallon gasoline and a deepening housing slump. This year's holiday shopping season may grow at the slowest pace since 2002 as stores struggle to recapture the gains they saw on the Friday after Thanksgiving

``After a huge start of Black Friday, the consumers have never been excited since then to shop,'' Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. ``The deals haven't gotten any better.''

Sales rose 19 percent over the weekend from Dec. 21 to Dec. 23, ShopperTrak said.

``Last-minute shoppers swamped the stores on the weekend,'' Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, said in a statement.

Internet Sales

U.S. Internet sales have risen at the slowest pace on record as discounts cut revenue in the final days of the holiday shopping season.

Online spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 21 increased 19 percent from the same period a year earlier to $26.3 billion, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc. said Dec. 23. Sales trailed last year's 26 percent growth and the research firm's forecast for a 20 percent gain during this year's holidays.

The National Retail Federation in Washington has said that sales may rise 4 percent this November and December, the smallest gain in five years. ShopperTrak has predicted a 3.6 percent increase.

Although customer visits increased for the week ended Dec. 22, ``this increase was not sufficient to compensate for the unfavorable traffic trends that carried over into December from the week following Thanksgiving,'' Target said on a recorded call.

BLOOMBERG