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Rising Oil Prices Not Discouraging Consumer Spending
July 6, 2005
ShopperTrak's Bill Martin on CNBC
MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA, co-anchor:
The July 4th bunting may already be packed away, but for retailers, the long weekend is far from over. They've been tallying up the receipts that were rung up over the holiday. So was there a firecracker of activity or were shoppers out at the beach? Here now with the weekend and June retail numbers first on WAKE-UP CALL is Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak. And he joins us from Chicago.
Good morning, Mr. Martin.
Mr. BILL MARTIN (Co-Founder, ShopperTrak): Good morning, Michelle.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Tell us--let's get right to the number, how did retail sales fare in June?
Mr. MARTIN: Well, we spent all night looking at them to make sure that we had them correct, and we're pretty excited to announce a pretty impressive number. Later this morning at 8:00 Central Time, we'll put June's number up on our Web site and it was an impressive 6.8 percent gain over the same period for last year.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Wow, that's pretty good. We're coming off the week of July 4th weekend, how did that impact the most recent week's sales?
Mr. MARTIN: As of last year, it was up 3.2 percent. So again, it shows some very strong and some impressive numbers when we look back through May, we saw a plus 6 percent, , so we're pretty excited by it.
CARUSO-CABRERA: So pretty good numbers, Bill, but this morning we're talking about the fact that oil is back above $60, we've got a summer here of record high gasoline prices. What is your sense of the health of the consumer at this point?
Mr. MARTIN: Well, it's pretty interesting because we're seeing gasoline here in Chicago approaching $2.50 a gallon, you know, and it's a huge number. But it looks as if the American consumer is sort of desensitized to it. They're paying it and they're moving on, and they're showing up in the retail stores in record numbers.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Yeah, over and over again we keep seeing that these oil prices don't seem to be dampening the consumer at all, no slack in demand.
Mr. MARTIN: No.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Hey thanks, Bill.
Mr. MARTIN: You bet.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Bill Martin is co-founder of ShopperTrak.
  
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