Despite last-minute gift buying and retailers' best efforts to woo shoppers much earlier with deep discounts, what could end up as the worst holiday shopping season in more than three decades sputtered to a close yesterday.
Barring a crush of post-Christmas spending, the holiday season will likely be the weakest since at least 1970, economists said.
"We're still seeing this choppy performance that has been the scene throughout the whole season," said Michael Niemira, a vice president of Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, which has tracked weekly and monthly retail sales since 1970.
Niemira said he expects November and December sales at stores open at least a year to grow 1.5 percent over 2001, a slower pace than last year's increase of 2.2 percent. Same-store sales growth - considered the best gauge of a retailer's performance - has shrunk each year since 1999, just before the economy slid into recession.
In an even more pessimistic view, ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based retail consultant, said it expects sales for December to plunge 5.5 percent compared with sales last year.
"American consumers are worried: They're worried about their jobs, they're worried about increased taxes on the municipal and state level, they're worried, at least initially, about the potential for war," said Jordan Kaplan, a managerial sciences professor at Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"Everything is going in the wrong direction right now, and the consumer is starting to feel it," he said.
Despite strong sales the weekend after Thanksgiving and Saturday, consumers for the most part reined in spending.
On Christmas Eve, shoppers headed to area malls for last-minute purchases or to take advantage of discounts of as much as 75 percent - not to spend heavily as retailers had hoped.
Last-minute shopping
Eli Jackson and Renee Smith donned Santa hats and joined other Security Square Mall shoppers who had presents wrapped, chose Christmas cards and picked up sweaters, scented body lotion and gold necklaces as last-minute gifts.
"I am always a Christmas Eve shopper; there's just not enough time," said Smith, a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was shopping with her boyfriend at the Woodlawn mall.
They found no bread makers left at Wal-Mart, so they headed to the mall, where they bought a backpack for Smith's brother, picked out Christmas cards and strolled hand-in-hand past stores, trying to come up with the perfect gift for Jackson to give Smith's mother.
As they have been all season, shoppers yesterday were lured by discounts of 50 percent to 75 percent.
A sign proclaiming up to 75 percent off at Glazer Jewelry at Security Square caught the eye of Fonda Fickling, a guard at nearby Social Security in Woodlawn. She and two of her co-workers stopped in to buy a gold chain for their supervisor.
"I got a good deal," she said, noting that with the 50 percent discount, "I could get something really nice."
Azell Monk Jr., a special education instructor at Randallstown High School, sat on a bench in the mall outside Hecht's, waiting for his wife and lamenting the commercialization of Christmas.
However, that didn't stop him from buying gifts for his family and friends, he said. "I hit my bank account two or three times today," he said. "There are a lot of sales this year."
And at Bath & Body Works, a line snaked nearly out of the store as shoppers took advantage of a promotion offering three bath items for $18.
Others at the mall were not there to only shop.
Delnora Bailey, a patient service coordinator at Johns Hopkins Hospital, waited for about an hour to have a sweat suit gift-wrapped by a complimentary service in the center of the mall.
"I can't wrap gifts; I'm not good at it," she said, displaying a box adorned with fancy ribbons.
Retailers had hoped that strong sales the weekend and remaining days before Christmas could save this holiday season.
Shoppers spent $7.2 billion Saturday, making it the single biggest sales day of the season, ShopperTrak said. Sales for that day beat sales from the day after Thanksgiving and rose 4.5 percent compared with the Saturday before Christmas last year, ShopperTrak said.
And despite the expected plunge in sales this month, during the weekend before Christmas, retailers took in $12.6 billion, 1.6 percent more than the weekend before Christmas in 2001, ShopperTrak said.
But retailers had hoped for better.
Just 'a bang'
A poll of 1,000 shoppers conducted last weekend by America's Research Group found that just a little more than 45 percent of Americans shopped over the weekend - 10 percentage points less than the numbers retailers expected.
"Retailers needed an explosion, and they just got a bang," said Britt Beemer, chairman and founder of the Charleston, S.C., consulting group. "Consumers wanted to see better deals. They were not going to pay full retail."
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday said its same-store sales rose at the low end of its predicted 3 percent to 5 percent increase, with the Wal-Mart stores division slightly below that range.
Federated Department Stores Inc., the owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's, said it appears that same-store sales for November and December will be down by more than 2.5 percent. And sales at Target Corp., Best Buy Co. and Barnes & Noble Inc. have also fallen short of forecasts.
Sales have also been hurt this season as consumers try to control credit card debt and buy less on credit, said Kaplan of Long Island University.
"This year, they don't want to rack up that much debt because they're worried about next year in a profound way," he said.