Content about Christmas and holiday season

New York City -- Holiday-related sales rose 0.7% from October 28 through December 24, compared with a 2% rise last year, according to a preliminary report from MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse.

"It has been a very uneven industry performance, probably at least for the last year, and that certainly continued into the holiday season," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, in a Reuters report.

Reston, Va. -- comScore reported Thursday that the most recent week achieved record-setting levels of online spending, eclipsing $7 billion in sales for the first time ever. Four individual days surpassed $1 billion in spending, led by Green Monday at $1.275 billion.

According to comScore, holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 46 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season has reached $35 billion, marking a 13% increase vs. the corresponding days last year.

Chicago -- A report released by ShopperTrak on Wednesday revealed a downwardly revised holiday forecast indicating a 2.5% year-over-year sales increase.

According to ShopperTrak, although week-over-week numbers improved, year-over-year statistics are stumbling. For the weekend ended Dec. 15, retail foot traffic rose 15.1% week-over-week, and sales increased 16.4% week-over-week.

But, in year-over-year comparisons, foot traffic declined 4.4% and sales declined 4.3%.

Washington, D.C. -- A report released Wednesday by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, found that retailers are in tune with the last-minute shipping intentions of the average consumer.

According to Shop.org’s 2012 eHoliday Study conducted by BIGinsight, 45.7% of retailers will end standard shipping promotions by Monday, Dec. 17, in direct response to the average consumer’s tendency to wait until the last minute to finish holiday shopping.

Washington, D.C. --  Retailers will lose an estimated $8.9 billion to return fraud this year, and $2.9 billion during the holiday season alone, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 Return Fraud Survey. Overall, retailers estimate 4.6% of holiday returns are fraudulent.

Reston, Va. -- Spending on Cyber Monday reached $1.46 billion, up 17% versus a year ago, making it the heaviest online spending day in history, according to comScore.

Retail e-commerce spending for the first 26 days of the November-December 2012 holiday season rose to $16.4 billion, up 16% versus the corresponding days last year.

New York -- According to a report by IBM, U.S. shoppers took full advantage of early promotions this holiday season, driving a 17.4% increase in online sales Thanksgiving Day. This increase set the stage for 20.7% growth on Black Friday. The biggest surge came from mobile consumers, with sales reaching 16.3%, led by the iPad.

The data is the result of cloud-based analytics findings from IBM.  

Other findings of the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark revealed the following trends:

New York -- Retail sales growth in the United States will rebound from the third quarter this holiday season, but will be down on the previous  two years' robust gains, according to a new report by Moody's Investors Service. The study, "Holiday Sales Will Overcome the U.S. Fiscal Policy Grinch," also finds that earnings growth will be slightly stronger.

Atlanta -- A majority of retailers say delivering a consistent customer experience is their top priority this holiday season, according to a new survey.

Supply chain and retail technology provider RedPrairie released results of its “Holiday Hiring Snapshot” survey of 250 big-box, specialty, grocery, convenience store and food service retailers based in the United States, finding that nearly 60% cited the importance of consistency, with 29% saying they would hire more seasonal workers this year than last year.

New York -- A report released Wednesday by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs found that consumers are more willing to spend this holiday season.

According to the 2012 Holiday Spending Intentions Survey, 19% of consumers plan to spend more (and 5% plan to spend substantially more) on holiday gifts this year versus last year.  This is the highest percentage of consumers reporting they intend to increase spending over the previous holiday season since ICSC began asking the question in 2004.

Atlanta -- Jones Lang LaSalle released a forecast suggesting that shopping centers will be pulling out all the digital stops this holiday season to engage and interact with consumers to influence purchasing decisions.