Card Based Spending Surges

Credit-card spending growth on Black Friday 2010 has returned to pre-recession levels, and grocers saw strong Thanksgiving-related growth, according to a new study released by Atlanta-based electronic commerce and payment processing vendor First Data Corp.

The “First Data SpendTrend” analysis found that overall, consumers responded favorably to aggressive Black Friday marketing campaigns which resulted in year-over-year same-store dollar volume growth of 12.3 percent, while transaction growth also showed strength at 10.1 percent. Overall dollar volume growth was particularly good in light of solid spending in the comparable Black Friday of 2009 when year-over-year dollar volume growth was 4.8 percent, while the “retailer merchant” category saw somewhat more muted dollar volume growth of 8.6 percent.

After several months of declining average purchases, consumers actually increased their overall average purchase size by 1.9 percent on Black Friday 2010. Despite discounting across most merchant categories, consumers made bigger purchases.

Thanksgiving-related purchases also substantially increased, according to the study. Travel merchant dollar volume growth was 16 percent, as more Americans travelled for the Thanksgiving holiday. Food/beverage stores (supermarket/grocery) also had an impressive Black Friday with dollar volume growth of 17 percent and average ticket growth of 5.8 percent.

SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending via credit, signature debit, PIN debit and EBT cards at U.S. merchant locations.

For more information, visit www.firstdata.com/infoanalytics