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Foot Traffic Down, but Xmas Business Beat E-Comm Forecasts, Survey Finds

While business headlines for the 2013 Christmas holiday season have been mostly downbeat, the 2013 holiday season beat forecasts, according to prominent market-research company ShopperTrak.

On Jan. 8, the Chicago-headquartered company stated that sales for the 2013 holiday season increased 2.7 percent, beating a 2.4 percent increase that ShopperTrak predicted before the holiday retail season started rolling.

“As we anticipated, retailers saw a gain in sales compared to last year as the economy continues to recover,” said ShopperTrak Founder Bill Martin. However, Martin also noted that the details of the holiday season were complex.

Consumer foot traffic plummeted 14.6 percent, according to ShopperTrak, which has cultivated a specialty in measuring foot traffic. It quantifies foot traffic at more than 50,000 global locations and analyzes the data in a proprietary model.

Extreme weather during December in many parts of the U.S. forced people to stay home and away from shopping areas, Martin said. Yet he and other market researchers have noted that the mall’s loss is the gain of e-commerce. The number of people who shopped e-commerce during the 2013 holiday is forecast to increase. Prominent e-commerce market-research company comScore reported that consumers spent $1.2 billion on e-commerce during Nov. 29, or Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas season, making it the first billion-dollar shopping day in the history of e-commerce.

Cardinal Commerce, a Cleveland-headquartered tech company that provides tools to help online retailers accept e-commerce and mobile devices, said that merchants using its system processed 46 percent more transactions during the holiday season compared with the same time in the previous year.

ShopperTrak’s Martin forecast that consumer patterns are changing and more shoppers will increasingly use e-commerce and mobile channels. However, he expected that the overwhelming majority of all retail sales in America will take place in bricks-and-mortar stores.