Shopping over the Black Friday weekend declined from the prior year for the first time since 2009, according to the National Retail Federation, an indicator the group blamed on a compressed holiday shopping season and poor consumer confidence — and a local industry watcher said that is bad news for Massachusetts retailers.
"People spent slightly less than they did last year," NRF president Matthew Shay told reporters in a conference call yesterday. "Many are intending to be a little more conservative with their budgets."
Shopping over the big holiday kickoff weekend declined for the first time since the worst of the recession, dropping from $59.1 billion in 2012 to $57.4 billion this year.
Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said NRF's data, if accurate, could be bad news for retailers for the rest of holiday shopping season. This past weekend needed to be huge, he said.
"We have one less weekend before Christmas this year than we did last year, so local retailers have a challenge generating more store traffic during this vital period," Hurst said.
"If true, the challenges of this season — short calendar, online competition and consumers which are still not optimistic — are going to prove to be difficult hurdles to overcome.
"Not impossible, but difficult both for sales growth and profitability," Hurst said.
Shay attributed the decline to retailers offering deals before Black Friday to compensate for the compressed holiday shopping schedule — with Thanksgiving at the very end of the month cutting out a weekend in December.
"We know retailers were working aggressively on their promotions," he said. "The deals began much earlier."
Chris Christopher, a retail analyst with IHS Global Insights, said shoppers could have simply started buying earlier.
"There is some evidence that the week prior to Black Friday week was especially strong," Christopher said.
Still, some stores were pleased with their sales this weekend.
"This year was certainly better than last year from a numbers standpoint," said manager Chris Kennedy at Ball and Buck on Newbury Street.
Sales nationwide have been undermined by subpar consumer sentiment in recent months. Confidence among U.S. consumers, whose spending makes up about 70 percent of the economy, was reported at a seven-month low in November. Data specific to Massachusetts, where stores were not allowed to open until after midnight on Friday, was not available, the NRF said.
Herald wire services contributed to this report.
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