By KATHERINE PETERSEN
Consumers in the Bay Area and across the nation kept a lid on holiday spending, although sales for the nine days before Christmas rose a bit from the lull after Thanksgiving.
People tended to wait for close-to-Christmas bargains, said Marjorie Fowler, a spokeswoman for TeleCheck Services Inc., a Houston-based check-acceptance company.
"If something was 20 percent off at the beginning of the shopping season, people would wait until it was 40 percent off just before Christmas," Fowler said.
She said Bay Area same-store sales remained flat, dropping 0.5 percent from last year, compared with a 3.8 percent drop in sales nationwide.
TeleCheck based its finding on a 1994-1995 comparison of the dollar value of authorized checks written by shoppers at more than 25,000 of TeleCheck's 150,000 subscribing stores.
Fowler said purchases by check account for about 37 percent of sales while credit card sales account for 14 percent.
She said data are not yet available on post-Christmas sales, which may have increased because of more bargains.
Sunnyvale Town Center manager Greg Moore said he thought sales at the mall remained flat during the Christmas shopping season, although sales figures will not be available until later this month.
"We saw people shopping later and sales went pretty much as expected," he said. He said he did not see many trends this year, except that people waited longer before purchasing coats and other outer garments because of the nice weather.
Moore attributed the flat sales to consumer debt and job insecurity.
"People may have a job today but maybe not down the road, which may have affected spending habits," he said.
Fowler agreed, adding that slow economic growth can keep people from opening their wallets.
Suzi Blackman, executive director of Sunnyvale's Chamber of Commerce, said people may have been more cautious because of the federal government's budget crisis.
"Even though the shutdown may not affect them directly, people get scared. I get more cautious about what I may or may not do," she said.
She added that retails sales were not quite what people had hoped. The week before Christmas produced a small surge of sales, but people did not buy in the volume expected.
"The day after Christmas used to have the largest sales, but many of them happened way before Christmas," she said. Even before Dec. 25, she found items for 40 percent to 50 percent off regular prices.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 10, 1996
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.