Press Release:
SALES INCREASE BY 0.8%
NEW YORK (June 8, 2010) – Warm weather throughout the nation acted as a sales catalyst for consumers and gave retailers another week of positive sales results. For the first week of the fiscal month of June, weekly sales improved by 0.8 percent, according to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs weekly sales index. On a year-over-year basis sales remained positive and improved by 3.0 percent.
“Sales spurted during the first week of the fiscal month of June as a bout of hot weather was the catalyst for apparel demand, in particular,” said Michael Niemira, ICSC director of research and chief economist. “For the month, ICSC Research expects sales will increase by 3.0 to 4.0 percent as easy comparisons will be boosted by the calendar-shift pushing Memorial Day sales into the June fiscal month as well as a ‘warm weather’ lift,” Niemira added.
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.
