consumer spending pattern

"Consumer spending patterns have been strong and have surprised a lot of people."

Although the Government has surveyed consumer spending patterns annually since 1979, the index is currently based on what people bought in the 1982-84 period.

Although the plan removed one uncertainty from the market, the decline in rates has stalled while the markets await news on consumer spending patterns.

The troubles at Federated seemed indicative of an anomalous trend in stable consumer spending patterns, analysts said.

"We now find ourselves confronted with even weaker consumer spending patterns for women's apparel," Mr. Miller said in a statement.

Moreover, market studies indicate that fine jewelry sales should continue to expand into the 1990's, based on favorable demographics and a shift in consumer spending patterns.

"It's fashionable today to shop wherever good merchandise is found," said Kurt Barnard, the president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, which tracks consumer spending patterns.

Mrs. Ramirez said the economy should continue to improve in the third quarter, "if our assumptions for business inventories, trade, consumer spending patterns, fixed investment and other factors hold up."

One reason that the Fed pays special attention to it is that it captures consumer spending patterns more accurately than the more widely reported Consumer Price Index.

Recently, the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia University and his co-authors concluded the US housing bubble had little effect on consumer spending patterns.

The shift that has been taking place in consumer spending patterns - toward apparel and other soft lines like linens and away from durable goods - should continue into the peak holiday shopping season.

The "former" numbers in both tables refer to a revision of the index's market basket of goods and services that took place in 1978 and that reflected consumer spending patterns in 1972-73.

"The Japanese love to shop," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, a company in Upper Montclair, N.J., that tracks national consumer spending patterns.

He said two of the three leading indicators he uses to determine future consumer spending patterns - average hourly wage growth and consumer installment debt as a percentage of disposable income - were signaling caution.

Despite some disturbing weakness in April housing data, and signs that consumer spending patterns are cooling a bit, analysts say the improvement in the economy is a bit more broad based now than it was a year ago.

Earlier this year, for example, he noted that comments by Citicorp officials about their credit-card business during the disappointing back-to-school selling period were an early warning of weak consumer spending patterns that were continuing.

"The real story of this holiday season is the strong home and family theme that ran through consumer spending patterns, giving the home furnishings and home entertainment categories strong year-over-year sales gains," Mr. Baker added.

But because Easter fell in March last year and on April 3 this year, a truer measure of consumer spending patterns may be discernible by combining the two months for last year and those for this year.

Asked whether three disappointing holiday sales seasons in a row indicated a fundamental change in consumer spending patterns, Lasker M. Meyer, vice chairman of Houston-based Specialty Retailers Inc., said: "That's a very good question.

Dent writes an economic newsletter that reviews the economy in the US and around the world through demographic trends focusing on predictable consumer spending patterns, as well as financial markets, and has written seven books, of which two recent ones have been bestsellers:

The 265 supermarkets on Long Island are in a state of flux, coping with "competition and rapidly changing consumer tastes and wants," said Kurt Barnard, the president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, which forecasts industry trends and consumer spending patterns.

That openness to shopping in a variety of stores has been a boon for specialty retailers like H&M and Mexx, whose sales grew more than 7 percent from April 2005 to April 2006, according to the NPD Group, which tracks consumer spending patterns.

New Weightings Used The January figure was the first to incorporate new weightings of consumer spending patterns, updating the market basket of goods and services to the 1982-84 period from the 1972-73 weightings that had been used since the preceding index revision that was made in 1978.