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January Retail Sales Rise

NEW YORK — Monthly same-store sales results for January reported Thursday indicate consumers may be becoming gradually less cautious in their spending.

NEW YORK — Monthly same-store sales results for January reported Thursday indicate consumers may be becoming gradually less cautious in their spending.

A composite of 31 retailers reporting sales for the month showed 4.99% same-store sales growth — higher than the 3.2% gain in December, and higher than the 3.3% gain reported in the same period a year ago, according to an analysis by Kantar Retail.

“Shoppers are slowly becoming less cautious about their spending and that appears to be borne out by January’s same-store sales results, especially when you factor out the negative impact of bad weather,” Frank Badillo, senior economist at RetailForward, Columbus, Ohio, a division of Kantar, said in a statement.

Severe weather conditions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states did have a negative impact on January sales at BJ’s Wholesale Club, which reported non-fuel same-store sales improved by only 0.3% in the period, down from a 2.4% gain last January, The Westborough, Mass.-based retailer estimated that winter storms affected same-store sales by approximately 2.5%.

Costco Wholesale, Issaquah, Wash., said U.S. same-store sales in January improved by 4% excluding gasoline.

Other retailers reporting same-store January sales Thursday included Target, up 1.9%, Walgreens, up 6.1%, and RiteAid, up 1.1%.