Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Executives at a number of US retailers may be surprised to see Bloomberg’s headline on Friday: “Retail Sales Rise Most in a Year, Marking U.S. Consumer Comeback.”

This despite a number of America’s top retail chains reporting dire earnings reports and lowering their outlooks this week. Macy’s shares fell to a four-year low this week, with one analyst saying its woes could doom a third of US shopping malls. Kohl’s reported an 87% drop in net income for its most recent quarter. Nordstrom is cost-cutting following its drop. Gap Inc. may close more Old Navy and Banana Republic stores as its portfolio struggles. JCPenney shares sunk 10% on Friday morning after its disappointing quarterly report.

Kohl’s quantified its distress with the report of a sales drop of 3.7 percent and a profits plunge of more than half; sales at stores open at least a year were down by 3.9 percent. This followed an earlier report by Macy’s that first-quarter sales had fallen off by a huge 7.4 percent, while profit plunged by 40 percent; same-store sales were down by 5.6 percent, Macy’s fifth consecutive quarterly decline. Earlier, Gap said its comparable-store sales for the quarter would be down by 5 percent....

Wal-Mart Stores said Tuesday that online sales broke company records, with more than 1.5 billion pages viewed on Walmart.com between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. The retailer said mobile sales accounted for about 70 percent of traffic to Walmart.com during the period.

Wal-Mart also said same-day pickups set records too, with orders up 70 percent from the same period last year.

But online sales across the board for retailers grew a smaller-than-expected 8 percent on Cyber Monday after web promotions before and during the Thanksgiving weekend robbed business from what has traditionally been the busiest day of the year for Internet shopping.

As of 6 p.m. EST Monday, data from IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark showed Cyber Monday sales grew sharply slower than comScore data over the weekend which showed a 32 percent rise in online orders on Thanksgiving and 26 percent on Black Friday.

Cyber Monday sales were projected to rise between 13-15 percent. The results highlight the waning importance of traditional shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, which until a few years ago kicked off the holiday shopping season....