Tightfisted Shoppers Kick Off Holiday Season ---- A Wall Street Journal Roundup
Christmas shoppers launched the holiday season with steely-eyed bargain hunting, lots of window shopping and only cautious spending.</br></br>During the bellwether weekend after Thanksgiving, the nation's retailers said they rang up respectable sales gains. Last year, the presidential election triggered an unexpectedly strong Christmas spending spree. But holiday shoppers at the start of the 1993 season stressed that, while they were encouraged by low interest rates and improvement in their own financial situations, they were looking for bargains.</br></br>"I just got a raise, so I have more money to spend," said Jim Baney, toting bags from Lord & Taylor and FAO Schwarz as he shopped in New York. But his companion, Sharon Gifford, said, "I won't buy anything unless it's on sale."</br></br>In one sign that shoppers are guarding their pennies, Visa Holiday Spendtrak data show transactions at discount stores Friday and Saturday accounted for more than 14% of total retail transactions on those two days. In the month-long holiday shopping period last year, discounters accounted for only 7.4% of retail transactions, according to the Visa data.</br></br>Retailers collect as much as half their annual profits during the holiday season, and the Thanksgiving weekend usually is an important indicator of business ahead. Most retailers expected holiday sales at stores open at least a year to rise between 3% and 8% -- outpacing the current inflation rate of less than 2%. Holiday same-store sales rose a robust 8% last year.