“As the holiday spending season draws to a close, there has been a huge schism between hope and reality once again as captured by these two numbers: 3.9% and -3.5%. The first, aka hope, is how much the national retail federation predicted holiday sales would rise by at the start of the holiday season; the second, aka reality, is how much in-store retail sales declined by in the week before Christmas. So what is a despondent retail industry – which unlike the stock market can’t put off delivering results forever – to do? Why bet it all on a huge after-Christmas surge of course.
As USA Today reports, some online sales, including at Target.com and Kohls.com, start on Christmas Day. And for sales die-hards, many Wal-Mart and Kohl’s stores will open on Thursday by 5 a.m. “This is an especially big time for people who got gift cards to come and spend on what they didn’t get for Christmas,” says Sarah McKinney, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. It is also the single-most popular day to redeem Target gift cards. Then again, one wonders just how hacked those are…
A quick summary of the panicked retailers’ biggest sales incentives and deals…”
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