Port Washington, N.Y. — The NPD Group said overall holiday sales grew 6.5 percent to $8.75 billion, with last-minute shoppers ringing cash registers at a record-setting pace during the final week of the holiday shopping season.
According to NPD’s point-of-sale data, $8.75 billion was spent from the week of Black Friday through Dec. 23, with $2.5 billion, or 28 percent, of those sales taking place during the final week. Last year, 27 percent of the holiday’s sales were generated during the final week.
While this year’s increase was acceptable, it was lower then the 10 percent increase posted during the 2005 holiday season, said Steve Baker, NPD’s industry analysis VP.
The top five selling categories for the year were LCD TVs, digital cameras, notebook computers, MP3 players and plasma TVs. Navigation systems did not break into the top five, but were the fastest growing category at retail, with revenue increasing 143 percent and unit shipments up 309 percent. Other big winners were external hard drives, digital cables and USB flash drives.
Source: The NPD Group
