Black Friday discounts boost retail sales

Consumers lured into stores by Black Friday discounts pushed up U.S. retail sales for the first time in three weeks.

Sales at stores open at least a year rose 1.3 percent last week from a year earlier, the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Tuesday in a joint statement.

The New York-based ICSC maintained its forecast for a 1 percent decline in November same-store sales, even as purchases on the day after Thanksgiving rose, because consumers held back on spending during the rest of the month. The forecast adds to evidence that holiday sales may rise the least in six years as the U.S. economy slips deeper into a recession.

"This holiday season unfortunately is going to go down as the season where full-price selling went to die," said Joel Bines, a director in the retail practice at consultant AlixPartners LLC. "Retailers are going to be challenged to hit their margin plans for the holiday season, just because of the aggressive nature of the discounting."

Total sales at U.S. retailers rose 1.9 percent in the two days following the Thanksgiving holiday, ShopperTrak RCT Corp. said. A decline on Nov. 29 further damped the smallest gain in three years on the day after Thanksgiving, called Black Friday.

Purchases fell 0.8 percent on Nov. 29 from a year earlier, a day after Black Friday sales rose 3 percent, Chicago-based ShopperTrak said. Total sales combined for Nov. 28 and 29, which include Black Friday, reached $16.6 billion, ShopperTrak said. Consumer spending accounts for more than two- thirds of the U.S. economy.

Redbook Declines

The Johnson Redbook Index, another measure of retail performance, fell 0.4 percent last week from a year earlier, following a 1.4 percent drop the week before. Black Friday was busy "but the momentum did not follow through to Saturday and Sunday," Johnson Redbook said.