Super Saturday Was Big
Not Super Saturday: Masses of shoppers descended on shopping malls on Dec. 18, Super Saturday. Let's hope they were better behaved than the zombies on "The Walking Dead," pictured above.
There’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, now there’s Super Saturday.
It was December 18. It was the Saturday that the International Council of Shopping Centers deemed one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Due to surging crowds of shoppers, weekly retail sales rose by 1.7 percent for the week ending Dec. 18, compared to the same week in the previous year, according to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs Chain Store Sales Index.
“Holiday-gift spending shot up over the last week with 73.9 percent of consumers, on average, completing their shopping, up from 56.6 percent in the prior week, which helped to propel weekly sales results up,” ICSC Chief Economist Michael Niemira said.
Holiday store-sales growth is expected to be the strongest since 2006, according to an ICSC statement. With robust November sales and promising trends in early December, ICSC revised its holiday sales forecast, and bumped it up 0.5 percent. The ICSC’s new forecast predicts a holiday sales increase of 3.5 to 4.0 percent.
