US retail sales grow 7.6% in holiday season

US retail sales rose 7.6 per cent between November 1 and December 24, which encompasses a majority of the holiday season, as steep discounts lured deal-hungry consumers, a Mastercard report showed on Monday.

The increase is higher than the 7.1 per cent growth Mastercard had forecast in September, when it anticipated consumers would pull purchases to October in the hunt for early deals.

However, this year's holiday retail sales growth is less than the 8.5 per cent increase last year as decades-high inflation, rising interest rates and the threat of a recession turned consumers cautious.

Retailers including Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc in the United States offered large discounts during the holiday season to get rid of excess stock and bring back inventories to normal levels.

That led to strong demand for everything from toys to electronics during the five-day-long period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

However, sales of electronics dropped 5.3 per cent over the broader roughly two-month period, according to the Mastercard SpendingPulse report.