Shopping, Retailer | featured news

Thrifty shoppers looking for low prices on basics are frequently passing up the big boxes of Walmart for the tighter aisles of their local dollar stores.

“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.

Warmer weather and an earlier Easter enticed shoppers into stores for spring merchandise in March, helping retailers post strong sales gains for the month....

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 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.

Online retailers hope the convenience of the Web, plus discounts and deals, spur still-nervous shoppers to spend more online this holiday season - even as traditional retailers brace for mediocre sales....

When the holiday shopping season kicks off the day after Thanksgiving, retailers can expect to see millions of less frightened, but even more bargain-hungry customers.

Some analysts are now predicting higher levels of holiday spending than in the year before.