Holiday Shopping Season, Retailer | featured news

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is going for the jugular in the holiday retailing war, announcing Thursday that it will offer free shipping on nearly 60,000 online items _ with no minimum purchase requirement.

Retailers should see their best Christmas sales in four years as consumers now show some inclination to spend money despite a minimal recovery in the economy, according to series of recent forecasts.

U.S. retailers are expected to post modest sales gains for September, on cautious back-to-school shopping and aggressive month-end promotions from department stores looking to clear inventory ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season.

“For the holidays, the tablets will be mostly Android-based, plus the iPad,” said Mike Vitelli, Best Buy’s President of North and South American business, in an interview.

Shoppers spent slightly more last month than they had the year before, but sales were far short of 2008 levels, heralding what could be a disappointing holiday shopping season.

U.S. retailers largely saw a strong finish to the 2009 holiday season even though sales fell at apparel chains and department stores in December, according to MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse.

The numbers are in. And they look good.

U.S. retailers performed better during the key holiday shopping season this year after a historically dismal 2008, performing in line with dampened expectations, according to data released on Monday.

The nation's retailers suffered miserably through November as a modestly positive start to the holiday shopping season wasn't strong enough to offset weak spending the rest of the month.

Experian Hitwise just released its Cyber Monday stats, with Amazon reportedly topping the list as the most visited retail website yesterday, seeing a 44% increase in visits compared to 2008. Amazon received 15.53% of the visits among the top 500 online retail sites.

Hitwise reports that among the top 500 retail websites, the percentage of U.S.