The Retailers Association of Massachusetts is predicting a strong holiday shopping season.

The annual holiday sales forecast shows an expected increase of 3.9 percent in the Bay State. If it holds, it will be the seventh consecutive year of increased sales.

RAM President Jon Hurst spoke exclusively with necn Wednesday.

"We surveyed our 4,000 members," Hurst said. "You have a lot of winners and losers, but primarily, we had good winners this year. And those stores really were optimistic."

The season, Hurst said, is expected to mirror the earlier part of the year.

"An average year would be about 3 percent. This is going to well beat that," Hurst said. "It's not going to be quite as high of an increase as last year, which was about 4.5 percent, but that was probably the best year we've had since pre-recession."