Did You Know?

Despite a late-summer dip in fuel costs, chances are holiday spending in 2008 will mirror that of 2007, when the holiday shopping season lived up to weak expectations. According to MasterCard Advisors, a branch of the credit card company, spending between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2007 rose just 3.6 percent over the same period from the year prior. That made for a weak season for retailers, who had seen spending increase by 6.6 percent in 2006 and nearly 9 percent in 2005 during the much ballyhooed Thanksgiving to Christmas holiday shopping season. Surprisingly, despite the weakened economy and escalating costs of both food and fuel, sales on luxury items had significant growth during the 2007 shopping season. Industry watchers saw luxury items jump by 7.1 percent during the 2007 holiday shopping season, perhaps indicating that people might be buying fewer items while still spending similar amounts of money. Interestingly, the rise in fuel costs meant a boon for online holiday shopping. Rather than spending money to gas up the car and drive to the nearby mall, many consumers instead simply went online, as online sales continued to rise in 2007. Research firm ComScore indicated that online sales reached $26.3 billion in 2007, including an eye-opening $881 million in total sales on Monday, December 10. That far exceeded the online sales of the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, a day retailers have begun to call Cyber Monday. Many consumers typically shop online that Monday after spending the weekend finding items and comparing prices at the mall.