LEX The US loves its national celebrations. February brings the Super Bowl, July is for fireworks, October means pumpkins and in November Americans eat turkey and go shopping. The day after Thanksgiving saw the highest store traffic for the third year in a row, according to ShopperTrak. Survey data from the National Retail Federation suggest 195m people visited a shop in person or online over the Thanksgiving weekend, up 13 per cent on the year before. So given consumer spending is by far the largest single contributor to the output of the US economy, what conclusions can be drawn?
First and foremost, frugality reigns. Bargain-hunting shoppers hit the stores early: two-fifths arrived by 6am on Friday to grab the limited number of headline special offers. Higher traffic appears to reflect greater effort to compare prices rather than a genuine pick-up in demand. Overall sales for the weekend were essentially flat on the year before, with average spend per person of about $340, down 8 per cent to just below 2007 levels.
