Store Sales Fell 4.7% Over Thanksgiving Weekend As Traffic Continued to Decline

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- RetailNext Inc., the worldwide expert and market leader in retail analytics for brick-and-mortar stores, today announced its final Holiday flash update for retail performance over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend, reporting a decrease in U.S. store sales of 4.7 percent on a 5.1 percent decline in store traffic. 

"The sales and traffic numbers only tell a partial story as retailers with strong digital businesses saw an uptick in the online channels that will positively impact the overall performance of the brand," said Shelley E. Kohan, vice president of retail consulting at RetailNext. "The weekend continued to demonstrate the emergence and importance of mobile shopping, and shoppers increasingly used digital devices to shop brands, research products, compare pricing and make purchases."

The overall performance of physical stores was more positive than the trends established leading up to the holiday weekend. While sales were down 4.7 percent, they were 1.5-7.5 points better than the five preceding months, and the decline in store traffic was only half of the monthly declines reported earlier in the year. Sales per Shopper (SpS) was up 0.3 percent over the holiday weekend, driven mostly by a 3.1 percent increase in Average Transaction Value (ATV). Conversion slipped slightly by 0.5 percent, in part due to the early Cyber Monday sales promotions started over the weekend, as well as savvy shoppers recognizing the end of the weekend does not denote the end of holiday price discounts and promotions.  

The strongest performances for the weekend came from the Midwest and Northeast regions, where pent up shopping demand from the previous two months helped bring in shoppers. Both regions experienced positive SpS growth through increases in ATV. A common theme among all regions was the drop in conversion, which ranged from 0.1 to 0.6 percent.

"The results for physical retail are generally positive when considering the growing influence of digital shopping, particularly in the mobile channel," continued Kohan. "Over the holiday weekend, there were patterns of strong results for retailers with less effective digital channels, and they outperformed on the brick-and-mortar side of the business. Of course, the flip side was true for brands with strong digital presences and who offered a seamless multichannel experience, and it's those brands who have a head start into retail's most important season."

The RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse is a monthly composite of key in-store metrics developed from specialty and large format retail stores on the RetailNext analytics platform and located within the continental United States. The complete Pulse report for the month ending November 28 on retail's 4-5-4 calendar will be available for free download later this week at http://www.retailnext.net.

About RetailNext
The first technology platform to bring e-commerce style shopper analytics to brick-and-mortar stores and malls, RetailNext enables retailers to collect and correlate data from the broadest available set of data sources. More than 200 retailers and brands worldwide have adopted RetailNext solutions to glean the insights necessary to improve customer experience, increase same-store sales, reduce theft and eliminate unnecessary costs.

RetailNext measures the behavior of more than three billion shoppers per year by collecting data from tens of thousands of sensors in retail stores and analyzing trillions of data points annually. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., RetailNext is a growing global brand operating in 50 countries. For more information, please visit www.retailnext.net.

RetailNext Inc. and RetailNext are trademarks of RetailNext Inc. in the United States.

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SOURCE RetailNext

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