Press release:
NEW YORK (May 25, 2010) – Retailers once again saw their sales dip as consumers pulled back a bit on their discretionary spending this past week. Overall for the week ending May 22, weekly sales slipped by 0.8 percent, according to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs weekly sales index. On a year-over-year basis sales were also affected and slowed to 1.3 percent.
“Sales continued to soften over the latest week as mixed regional influences from weather combined with uneven traffic and some softer spending by consumers led to the decline,” said Michael Niemira, ICSC director of research and chief economist. “Given the last two weeks sales are now tracking about 2.0 to 2.5 percent for the month which is somewhat below ICSC Research’s earlier expectation of approximately 3.5 percent,” Niemira added.
In observance of Memorial Day, the ICSC-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Snapshot will be released on Wednesday, June 2, 2010.
The Weekly Chain Store Sales Snapshot is produced by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs. This index measures U.S. nominal same-store or comparable-store sales excluding restaurant and vehicle demand. The weekly index is constructed as a sales-weighted geometric average growth rate to preserve long-term consistency and is statistically benchmarked to a broad-based monthly retail industry sales aggregate that currently represents approximately 40 retail chain stores, which also is compiled by ICSC. A representative sample of those major retailers has been used as a control group to extrapolate the weekly sales index. As such, the weekly index statistically represents industry sales and is not just a sum of sales for a handful of retailers. The standard period used for the index is Sunday through Saturday, even though some retailers use a different weekly accounting period. The weekly sales index is presented on an adjusted basis to account for normal seasonality and to counter other data anomalies. Weekly seasonal adjustment is at best difficult for chain store sales given that retailers can and often do shift promotions to counter typical shifts in the calendar. Nonetheless, the approach to weekly seasonal adjustment used follows from the Piser Method, which was popular in the early 1930s and became the standard for weekly adjustment.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a bank holding company and a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm. Goldman Sachs provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net worth individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other major financial centers around the world.
