PayPal or paypal like services (very trackable)

Bank Drafts/Electronic checks (very trackable)

Credit/Debit Cards (easily trackable and included in this dataset)

Cash is the pain in the ass residual in figuring out overt white market spending patterns as cash is what fuels the gray and black markets both on income (working under the table) and expenditures

As far as Safeway selling non-grocery items, in this dataset it is irrelevant whether you bought white onions or a replica Voltron lunchbox at Safeway, Mastercard is just seeing the dollar figure — in other reporting such as the BEA retail sales report, you can compensate for it, but it is a little bit tougher.

I wonder about places like Safeway that are getting more into the Christmas sales market (and even the non-grocery markets). How large a slice of the sale are they likely to carve out for themselves and will the conventional means of tracking consumer spending account for the non-grocery stuff bought in grocery stores? I mean, that $52,000 number is not necessarily a tiny number. If other stores have done even close to that in the general area, that's an appreciable amount. If those sales are cash sales (which mine were, for instance), it's worth keeping in mind.

Good point about the accrual accounting as well.

The point of confusion is when Wal-Mart or Saks 5th Avenue is allowed to book the gift card as a sale. Right now you buying a hypothetical $100 gift card on say Dec. 15th to give on Dec. 25th and not spent until Jan. 11, 2008 for instance means that the gift card issuer has a liability of $100 on Dec. 26, 2007, and can only book the revenue of $100 on Jan. 11. Different set of accounting rules, as the Mastercard data set seems to be reasonably simple cash accounting while the retailers have to use accrual accounting for the giftcards.

And please. I understand that anecdote is not data. I would not have mentioned it if my experience were unusual. It certainly is not. I am far from the only person who has done much of my shopping online. One of my co-workers who had not ever made a purchase on the internet until this year did a good bit of her shopping on the internet also, according to her. Her story is fairly typical of he stories I've heard this year.

One anecdote is not data. Many anecdotes should at least make you consider which way the anecdotes are running.

But hey, it's a big number, and it's halfway through the article, ergo…liberal media bias!

"This sales data also includes Food & Energy. The 3.6% is before we make adjustments for inflation. The specifics of MasterCard’s data includes purchases made by more than 300 million MasterCard debit and credit card users; it covers not just store purchases, internet buys and gift cards: It also includes gasoline and meals at restaurants, both of which had seen significant price increases this year.

Next remember that you as a blogger are a little bit unusual in how much you use and how comfortable you are with technology and the internet. Online sales is a small but rapidly growing segment, it is not the dominant segment that walking into a store, looking at three different shirt styles and waiting in line for eight minutes at the register is. Anectdote is not data.