Holiday Shopping Season | featured news

United Parcel Service Inc reported lower quarterly profit on Tuesday, citing slowing global trade, and said there was "some uncertainty" about the strength of the coming holiday season.

I know you don’t want to hear this, but Christmas is less than 75 days away. It will be here in a blink of any eye. Right now is a great time to sit down to create a plan for your holiday gift shopping without accumulating a pile of debt.

Best Buy said Friday that it has authorized its store staffers to match online prices of competitors in some cases, as it beefs up service offerings as the all-important holiday season kicks off.

The best that can be said about the 2012 holiday shopping season is that it will be about average, according to the latest forecast from the National Retail Federation (NRF), a retail trade group.

Best Buy Co reported weaker-than-expected sales for the key holiday quarter, prompting the world's largest electronics chain to close 50 U.S. stores and cut 400 jobs in corporate and support areas.

Target Corp. is reporting a 5.2 percent drop in earnings for the fourth quarter, as the retailer pushed big discounts to get tight-fisted shoppers to buy during the holiday season.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc won over shoppers during the holiday season, with its Walmart U.S. division posting a 1.5 percent rise in sales at stores open at least a year.

With the rumblings from Amazon about the early success of its new Kindle Fire over the holiday season, the company’s disappointing fourth quarter results came as a surprise. More surprising was Amazon’s silence regarding total Kindle Fire sales for the quarter. During the earnings call, Amazon’s executive team deferred questions about the device to the press release, which simply regurgitated sales data from December.

Retail sales barely rose in December, but the gain was enough to lift sales to a record level for 2011. It marked the largest annual increase in more than a decade. Sales inched up 0.1 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted $400.6 billion, The Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the second straight month that sales have topped $400 billion. Never before had monthly sales reached that level.

The final weeks of 2011 were the economy's strongest since it appeared to be slipping toward recession in late spring.