With consumer spending surging, retailers are hoping for something they haven’t seen since the last recession began a decade ago: a truly great Christmas, Bloomberg reports.
The Commerce Department reported better-than-expected U.S. retail sales for November and revised its October figures upward, bringing a fresh wave of optimism to a long-embattled industry.
Holiday shoppers are snapping up Nintendo Switch devices and Fingerlings toys as their disposable income grows, says Craig Johnson, head of the Customer Growth Partners. His research firm just boosted its forecast for holiday sales to 5.6%, well above the 4.3% it had targeted earlier.
“We think this marks the beginning of a real and sustained rebound,” Johnson says. After tracking the 50 largest retailers across 90 major shopping venues, he believes that spending will grow more this season than in any holiday since before the Great Recession began in 2007.
The spending uptick is good news for retailers of all stripes, but some are faring better than others. Online spending growth is expected to outpace brick-and-mortar expenditures, and plenty of companies are still struggling.
