It was a slow start but Canadian consumers made a strong comeback in December, opening their wallets for Christmas shopping.
As the major chartered banks become a source of real-time data on consumer behavior, we have the latest update from RBC Royal Bank on how we fared through the month of December.
We probably won’t get these figures from StatsCan for another month or two but the banks can make an assessment as they monitor activity in client accounts and cards.
What they found was that Black Friday in November was soft, sparking fears that 2024 would be a difficult year-end for retailers. But, as December started to roll, we kicked into action. And before long had caught up to the 2023 pace and passed it quite substantially when it came to shopping in bricks and mortar stores by mid-December.
The peaks in activity were a day or two before Christmas and then again on Boxing Day in stores while on-line traffic saw its peak on Cyber Monday, almost a month before Christmas.
