The holiday shopping season is on set to go out with a bang.
The International Council of Shopping Centers predicted that 74 million Americans will pick up last minute presents on Christmas Eve.
Tuesday was such a busy day that the registers went down at some Kroger stores across the nation, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. For roughly an hour Tuesday, Twitter was blowing up with memes and comments from upset shoppers about Kroger stores the day before Christmas.
According to online users, all registers were down and could not accept card payments. Customers had to pay in cash until the issue was resolved. Shoppers also could not purchase gift cards even with cash.
It was reminiscent of a wider spread nationwide Target outage in mid-June, the day before Father's Day and of Costco's website problems on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
In a holiday season that had six fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was no time to lose for last-minute shoppers.
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Super Saturday was predicted to have been the busiest shopping day of the year. The National Retail Federation forecast that 147.8 million Americans scooped up gifts that day, up from 134.3 million in 2018.
“Most of us are guilty of having that one last gift we need to buy,” Prosper Executive Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist said in a statement. “Men and younger consumers continue to be the biggest procrastinators.’’
Since 2014, Black Friday has yielded its mantle as the busiest shopping day of the year to ''Super Saturday,'' the last Saturday before Christmas.
But Americans spread out their shopping this year. As of early December, 86% had started their holiday shopping, and finished more than half of their buying for the season, according to the NRF.
That was down just a bit from the 88% of shoppers who started their gift buying at the beginning of December last year. The last time the holiday shopping season was so short, in 2013, shoppers had finished half of their buying by the start of this month.
Despite trepidation about the trade talks between the U.S. and China and that tariffs could lift retail prices, retail watchers predicted a robust shopping season for 2019. When the final tally is taken, consultancy Deloitte expects sales to have jumped between 4.5% and 5% for the period spanning November into January.
That will amount to more than $1.1 trillion during the retail sector's most lucrative and important season. In the same time period last year, sales totaled $1.09 trillion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Though most sales continue to happen at physical stores, the biggest sales spike was expected to happen online, with purchases increasing between 14% and 18%, compared with the same period last year when e-commerce sales rose by 11.2%.
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That could mean retailers added between $144 billion and $149 billion from e-commerce sales to their bottom lines.
Cyber Monday, the finale to the season's biggest shopping weekend that kicks off on Thanksgiving, became the busiest online shopping day in U.S. history. Consumers spent $9.4 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, a 19.7% increase over that day in 2018.
As of Dec. 2, Americans had spent a record-breaking $81.5 billion clicking and buying on their smartphones, tablets and laptops. That was 14% more than shoppers spent online at that point last year.
Holiday returns are expected to drive shoppers back to stores.
According to the retail federation, 55% of shoppers surveyed say they will return or exchange any unwanted gifts or holiday items within the first month after receiving them, with 80% saying they prefer to make returns and exchanges in stores.
Contributing: Segann March, Cincinnati Enquirer
Follow Charisse Jones on Twitter @charissejones and Kelly Tyko on Twitter @KellyTyko
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