Holiday procrastinators packed stores Friday morning, grabbing those last few presents, snagging gift cards and the finishing touches for Christmas dinner. For stores, this 11th-hour dash caps the best holiday season since 2007.
Also, online sales rose 15.4% according to a MastercardSpendingPulse report. Gains were led by apparel, where online shopping accounted for 18.8 percent of overall sales in that category, up from 16.9 percent in 2009.
MasterCard SpendingPulse™ is a macroeconomic indicator that reports on consumer spending in a variety of categories—from gasoline to apparel—in the United States (total retail sales and industry reports) and the United Kingdom (total retail sales only).