{"id":1673255,"date":"2014-03-17T12:17:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T19:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/17\/retail-sales-perk-up-as-spring-approaches\/"},"modified":"2014-03-17T12:17:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T19:17:33","slug":"retail-sales-perk-up-as-spring-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/17\/retail-sales-perk-up-as-spring-approaches\/","title":{"rendered":"Retail sales perk up as spring approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Things are looking up for the American <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">retail industry<\/a>, as the latest retail customer trends show gains in nearly every sector. The February U.S. Commerce Department report revealed February saw seasonally adjusted month-over-month gains of 0.3 percent from January. According to Bloomberg, this follows <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-03-13\/retail-sales-in-u-s-increase-for-first-time-in-three-months.html\">a three-month stretch of losses<\/a>, including 0.6 percent drops in retail sales in January. Many economists believe the low sales numbers this winter were caused by harsher weather conditions.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The economy seems to be rebounding from a winter-related slump,&quot; said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York.<\/p>\n<p>Retail sectors that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/money\/business\/2014\/03\/13\/retail-sales-february\/6362465\/\">experienced growth in February<\/a> included restaurants, automotive, furniture and building materials, USA Today reported. Electronics and grocery stores, on the other hand, experienced modest declines.<\/p>\n<p>If weather really was the driving factor for the drop in sales, merchants can expect to see an uptick in the amount of traffic in their online and brick-and-mortar stores as Americans get back to shopping. This could be a great opportunity for retailers to update their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">ecommerce software<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">POS<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">retail management systems<\/a> in preparation for the anticipated influx of customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Things are looking up for the American retail industry, as the latest retail customer trends show gains in nearly every sector. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/17\/retail-sales-perk-up-as-spring-approaches\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1673256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-specialty-retail-industry-trends"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1673256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}