Latest data show that online shoppers splurged more on commodities at Thanksgiving Day this year than they used to for the holiday. The company said it is an “estimated decrease from last year” but did not give the percentage decline due to an internal change in the way it calculates data.
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Jeff Simpson, a director at Deloitte Consulting LLP’s retail practice, surveyed shopping centers in North Carolina and saw smaller crowds than expected for Black Friday.
“This year, we saw Black Friday ads emerge before Halloween, as retailers aimed to get at the shopper’s wallet early”, said Kevin Kearns, ShopperTrak chief revenue officer.
Reports on in-store sales are expected later this weekend.
According to IBM’s measurements, Black Friday online sales rose 20.7% as mobile sales moved ahead of desktop, through 6 PM.
But Target, along with other bricks-and-mortar retailers still face an ongoing threat from e-commerce giants like Amazon.com Inc. which has been offering shoppers free, two-day shipping membership program. The National Retail Federation, a trade group, expects retail sales online and in stores in November and December to rise at a rate of 3.7 percent, to $630 billion – slightly less than last year’s 4.1 percent gain.
Online Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales tracked by Adobe Digital Index were $4.47 billion, up 18 percent from a year earlier and higher than its expectation of $4.35 billion. The other is that the growth of e-commerce in general is leading to a lot more competition for online shoppers, resulting in lower prices. Adobe said its projections are within 2 percent of the actual spending on those Websites.
With more than 1,200 of the world’s leading retailers, malls and entertainment venues, ShopperTrak deploys over 80,000 devices across 97 countries and territories.
Those shopping on any mobile devices made up 34 percent of the sales across this two-day period.
On Thanksgiving, email promotions accounted for 14% of online sales, says Adobe, rising 25% from last Thanksgiving. A preliminary reading of Black Friday by Retail Metrics declared traffic across apparel and department stores “uninspiring”. IHS considers the holiday shopping season to include both November and December.
The data highlights the waning importance of Black Friday, which until a few years ago kicked off the holiday shopping season, as more retailers start discounting earlier in the month and open their doors on Thanksgiving Day.
One retailer with high stakes riding on this holiday season is J. Crew, whose sales slump has sent its bonds into a downward spiral, sparking talk of a possible debt restructuring.
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She said discounting levels online averaged 26 and 24 percent on both days respectively, and remained similar to last year’s levels.
