Retail, Retailer | featured news

Sales increase 3.3% over a year earlier in a usually slow month. Notably, beleaguered Abercrombie & Fitch posts an 8% increase.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will cut about 11,200 jobs at Sam's Club warehouses as it turns over the task of in-store product demonstrations to an outside marketing company.

Foot Locker Inc. is cutting about 120 jobs and plans to have closed 117 stores by the end of this month as it looks to become a more efficient and competitive business.

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.

Consumers spent more on gasoline and a wide range of other goods, data showed, raising hopes of a self-sustaining economic recovery.

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.

Retail Web sites kept amping up the deals Monday, the first day after Thanksgiving weekend's strong online sales, to try to maintain the momentum.