Holiday Promotions Fill Consumers' Stockings According to Newest U.S. Retail Benchmarks Report From Euclid

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 8, 2015) -  Euclid, the leader of in-store retail analytics, today releases its monthly retail benchmarks report to analyze shopper activity and behavior during the month of December. This month's report measured data from tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions to reveal that shopping activity increased dramatically from November, but declined compared to last year. Although traffic dropped year-over-year as the shift towards online shopping accelerated, it was buoyed by a highly promotional month. In-store engagement improved remarkably for the busiest shopping month of the year, with average duration up and bounce rate at a three-month low.

Euclid asserts that its metrics illustrate a slightly positive outlook for industry revenues, and estimates sales growth in the following retail verticals of:

• 0.6% growth year-over-year in general merchandise, apparel, furniture and other (GAFO) retail sales
• 1.2% growth year-over-year in clothing and apparel sales
• 1.5% decline year-over-year in general merchandise sales

Here are some of Euclid's top findings in this month's report around shopper behavior metrics:

• Shopper traffic declined five percent compared to the same month last year as online and mobile shopping continued to cannibalize store visits
• Storefront conversion was up two percent year-over-year, benefitting from highly targeted shopping driven by attractive promotions
• Duration increased twelve percent from last year as improving consumer sentiment, declining gasoline prices, and multi-year lows in unemployment boosted consumers desire to spend
• Repeat visits increased less than a percent, helped by a surge of incremental store trips to take advantage of post-Christmas discounts

The best shopping day of December was Friday the 26th, the day after Christmas. The 26th saw significantly more traffic, higher storefront conversion, and higher levels of engagement compared to last year. The results were driven by heavily advertised post-Christmas promotions and robust holiday gift card spending. On the other hand, Cyber Monday, on December 1st, was the worst shopping day of the month. Traffic and repeat ratio suffered from a Black Friday weekend hangover, while shoppers turned their attention to e-commerce deals.

Holiday Season Recap:

Holiday season traffic was slightly weaker than expected, declining more than 10% year-over-year. However, Storefront conversion increased 2% compared to last year as each trip to the mall became more focused. Bounce rates continued to decline and average visit durations increased 12% as shoppers showed a strong willingness to spend discretionary income amidst a favorable economic environment. It appears that retailers' investments in revitalized in-store experiences paid off during the month. We believe that the benefit from engaged shopping visits outweighed the lack of bodies in the store, and expect holiday sales to have increased year-over-year.

To view the complete findings, download the full report on shopper activity for the month of December here: http://info.euclidanalytics.com/WC14-12USRB_Reg_RLP.html

About Euclid
Euclid provides answers and insights to brick and mortar retailers in the same way that web analytics services do for e-commerce. Euclid helps retailers quantify offline impact of marketing, optimize store performance, and understand customer behavior. As of December 2014 Euclid's network has grown to capture billions of measurements per day, analyzing hundreds of millions of potential shopping sessions per year across thousands of locations. Only anonymous, non-personal data is ever collected and only aggregated trend data is used for analysis.