Retailers bump up lures to shoppers
With 10 days left until Christmas, many people still haven’t finished their shopping. And many say they’re not impressed with what they’re finding in stores.
But they’ll eventually have to buy something, experts say, and retailers are trying to make sure that happens with them – offering extended store hours, elaborate promotions and deep discounts in line with the Black Friday deals that started the season.
Shoppers in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky turned out in droves for eye-popping discounts on the day after Thanksgiving, contributing to a better-than-expected 1.2 percent increase in nationwide retail sales for November, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
But store traffic has slowed significantly in recent weeks.
According to data released Wednesday by ShopperTrak RCT, store traffic for the week that ended Dec. 8 fell 12.3 percent compared with a year earlier.
That follows a 4.7 percent drop in shoppers visiting stores for the week ending Dec. 1 when compared with a year earlier, according to Chicago-based ShopperTrak, which tracks sales at more than 50,000 U.S. retail locations.