NPD Group's Weekly Holiday report finds shoppers keen on brick-and-mortar stores in mid October

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 10/30/2012 11:23:50 AM

Port Washington, NY - For the week ending October 20, the NPD Group's Shopping Activity Weekly Holiday Trends report showed that 57% of U.S. consumers went shopping at brick-and-mortar retail stores.

But more impressive was that shopping incidence for mass merchants was at 32%, the largest level of shopping at any channel. By comparison, shopping incidence at national chain stores was 5%, and 4% for department stores, apparel specialty stores and home hardware stores.

NPD Group's Shopping Activity Weekly Holiday Trends is special report will follow the weekly holiday shopping trends over the course of the 2012 holiday retail season, and is being released weekly. For it, the company fields an online study to 4,750 U.S. consumers daily. It captures brick-and-mortar shopping behavior and online purchase behavior in general merchandise channels, including purchases of categories from apparel to entertainment to toys and video games. It excludes the following channels: grocery, drug, gas, convenience and restaurant.

For the October 20th week, it was found that about 65% of shopping visits to a brick-and-mortar store resulted in a purchase. That trend remained steady throughout the weeks ending September 29 - October 20.

Also noteworthy among the weekly report's findings was that the channels that had the highest conversion rates included warehouse clubs at 88%, mass merchants at 75%, and home hardware stores at 64%.

Over the week, online buying visits accounted for 16.3% of all buying visits -- no change from the prior week.