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The last Saturday before Christmas, also known as Super Saturday (Dec. 18), posted a 15.1 percent sales increase compared to the same time last year, according to ShopperTraks National Retail Sales Estimate. The year-over-year increases were dramatic, but obviously slanted as shopping activity was essentially crippled in the Northeast last year, says Bill Martin, founder of ShopperTrak. That said, we shouldnt discard the day as $7.58 billion spent is steady and compares admirably to $7.87 billion spent on Super Saturday 2008 when there was no blizzard. At this point, we anticipate Super Saturday will represent the second-largest traffic day

Office Depot Inc. rose to a six-month high and trading of bullish options jumped to 14 times the four-week average on speculation that the retailer will be bought after it boosted executives' pay in the event of a sale.

It's beginning to look a lot like a Merry Christmas after all for retailers. Sales projections are increasing nearly every week as even shoppers who said they were finished hit malls this week. Now stores are starting to say they expect the 2011 holiday season to be even better.

Much has been made of how the better holiday sales are lifting U.S. economic growth. Retail trends, however, are also playing a role in inflation for this quarter — possibly helping the Federal Reserve achieve its policy goals.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said its fiscal third-quarter profit rose 28 percent as sales at its home products stores climbed. The results topped analyst expectations.

comScore reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 49 days of the November — December 2010 holiday season. For the holiday season to date, $28.36 billion has been spent online, marking a 12 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

The top retail websites broke a traffic record in November with 179.5 million unique visitors, according to comScore's monthly Media Metrix report on top U.S. web properties. Amazon took the top spot in the retail category with 83.9 million unique visitors in November (up 4 percent from October).

Forrester Research surveyed manufacturer website visitors to gain a better understanding of the role the sites played in visitor's researching and purchasing paths. It found that manufacturer website visitors are habitual web buyers, and mainly use search engines and URLs to find manufacturer sites.

In the fall of 2008, when the Snuggie was introduced in an infomercial, it was mocked by television hosts including Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres and went viral, garnering millions of viewings on YouTube and spawning hundreds of parody commercials.