That “must have” item ”“ the one you don”™t need, but want desperately ”“ may have lost its red-tag status.
The average ticket price for U.S. luxury goods rose 11 percent last month from a year earlier.
February and January saw luxury sales gains of 10 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.
The data come from Purchase-based MasterCard Advisors”™ SpendingPulse report. The March gain was the biggest in the past two years. The steepest drop was a 13 percent decline in December 2008.
The figures do not include the jewelry sector.
SpendingPulse tracks a broad swath of economic activity in the U.S. and U.K. ”“ including hardware, luxury items, restaurant spending, autos, e-commerce, apparel, overall retail, hotels, gasoline ”“ issuing weekly and monthly analytics.
SpendingPulse is not limited to credit card data, gauging retail sales across cash and checks, as well. To determine what constitutes “luxury,” the firm isolates the top 10 percent of ticket prices at the high end of clothing and leather goods.
Sales of luxury goods soared 23 percent in March from a year ago, SpendingPulse said.
In a corroborative report, Business Week reported Tiffany & Co. has raised prices across the store.
In the last months of 2008, luxury retailers discounted goods by as much as 70 percent to clear inventories after consumer spending crashed during the recession.
The average price of a luxury handbag sold at U.S. department stores is rising to $1,800 this year after falling to $1,600 last year from a pre-recession $2,000, reported A.T. Kearney, a management consulting firm in New York quoted in Business Week.
