Holiday Spending by Affluent and Luxury Consumers May Help Create Pleasant Surprise for Retailers

With many different organizations providing their predictions of holiday sales and others offering their estimates of actual holiday sales, using various methodologies, it is understandably confusing and difficult to determine what the consumer is actually doing. While retail sales for November, particularly on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, have been encouraging for retailers, there is a risk that these positive comparisons to 2010 sales primarily reflect a change in the timing of purchases rather than in volume or total value.

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