“We buy just for the Black Friday weekend – probably close to $1 million of products just for the weeklong sale”.
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“The use of “click and collect” this Thanksgiving holiday weekend highlights the growing popularity of omnichannel shopping”, said Jesse Tron, ICSC Spokesperson.
But beyond those mitigating factors, consumer (and retailer) habits are changing in a way that could make the singular impact of previous Black Friday holidays a thing of the past.
People are still shopping. This also allowed shoppers to enjoy savings before items ever reached the shelves, eliminating the need to wade through hectic Black Friday crowds in an effort to save money.
Items filling shopping carts lean more toward the functional than the frivolous.
NRF President Matthew Shay believes that the shift in preference from conventional in-store shopping to online shopping is an emerging trend in American consumerism. As of November 28, 77.6 percent of those polled said they had at least started their holiday shopping.
Argos confirmed it had experienced delays on its site after “extremely high levels of visits”. Many consumers will wait until their lunch hour to shop (16.6 percent) and more than a quarter will wait until early afternoon (29.5 percent). The average online order cost $127.27, with 30 percent of sales coming from smartphones and tablets, IBM said.
Another retail analytics firm, RetailNext Inc., issued a slightly more optimistic report Tuesday on Black Friday store sales, saying sales declined by 4.7 percent during the four-day weekend.
“This year, we saw Black Friday ads emerge before Halloween”, he said, and in-store sales were bigger in the days leading up to Black Friday, “which is a result of retailers successfully elongating the holiday season”.
“Our Black Friday was a little below normal, mostly because of the weather”, owner Harley Hooper said.
Park Meadows retailers’ reports on the day after Thanksgiving were more “good” than “double-digit, record-breaking”, this weekend, she said.
“I don’t know if I’ll do this next year because after 10 years you kind of get exhausted of it”, Tatum said. The firm also reported that an estimated $8.3 billion was spent online between Thursday and Sunday of last week, a 17 percent increase from 2014.
At first blush, this past Black Friday weekend was a disappointment. No lines had more than a few customers.
“Looking at the weekend as a whole, there was a different pattern of trade to past year”, John Lewis said.
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“There were a couple moments where we thought, ‘Is it going to be too early for people, ‘ ” he said. That number jumps to 61.1% for 18-24 year olds and 60.2% for 25-34 year olds.
