Same store Sales
Same Store Sales is a business term which refers to the revenue generated by one of a retail chain's specific outlets during a certain period of time (often a quarter or a particular shopping season), compared to an identical period in the past, usually in the previous year.
Same Store Sales are also known as Comparable Store Sales or Like-Store Sales.
By comparing how well a particular outlet performs during a particular week compared to that same week in the previous year, business trends can be measured more accurately. Seasonal and geographical variations are removed from the measurement: instead of collecting an average over spans of time and location, annual changes in a specific store's performance are revealed.
For example, a retail chain's finding that its same store sales at location A for the week-long shopping rush before Christmas are greater than those at location B is a useful piece of data. That data would have been less useful if only chain-wide sales for that week were known (with all stores averaged together), or if only year-long sales were known for that particular store.