Of those who shopped in stores over the weekend, 72.8% – 74.2 million shoppers – said they shopped on Black Friday, the biggest day of the weekend; another 34.6 million (34%) said they shopped on Thanksgiving Day and 46.8 million (45.9%) shopped on Saturday. Online sales jumped 14.3 percent Friday compared with Black Friday 2014. Though fewer in numbers, tablet users have been found to have spent more, averaging at $136 in total purchases, reports CNN Money. Some of the best-selling items were high-priced games and gadgets such as Beats by Dre headphones, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming consoles, and Samsung 4k smart TVs.
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That’s still a lot of people and a lot of spending, but it’s clear Black Friday and the Thanksgiving weekend are different animals these days.
The massive sales peaks that used to surround Black Friday have been replaced by calmer, sustained sales over the holiday shopping season.
Sales are only expected to increase as Cyber Monday grows in popularity. Almost 32.4% shopped at clothing stores and 35.1% at electronic stores.
The holiday shopping season kicked off last week and is on track for a 3.7% increase this year. More people opted to stay home and shop online, rather than courageous the stores during the long Thanksgiving weekend, according to data from the National Retail Federation. For years, Black Friday has been accompanied by deep discounts and video footage of shoppers literally fighting over merchandise. Retailers offered doorbuster sales as early as Halloween, generating holiday sales well before Black Friday, ShopperTrak noted. The NRF’s survey reported that more than 151 million people shopped either in stores and/or online over the weekend – 15 million more than what was estimated in a mid-November survey.
NRF President and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Shay said the outlook for the holiday season remained solid, given the low unemployment rate, lower gasoline prices and other factors.
Warm weather and some recent speed bumps in job growth have affected retail sales during the fall, economists said.
The year’s most anticipated shopping weekend is in the rear-view and for the first time ever, browsing on mobile devices overtook desktop viewing.
Cyber Monday is a day when e-commerce sites roll out additional deals. But while total sales may be increasing, the average order size has actually decreased.
But U.S. consumers who tried to avoid the traffic jams and holiday shopping crowds at brick-and-mortar stores were faced with website outages, online traffic jams, product sellouts, and slow checkouts.
The survey shows that 42.2% of customers plan to shop online in the early morning of Cyber Monday, while 33% meant to shop later in the morning.
Even Kylie Jenner’s Lip Kit was having massive outage issues.
Twenty six percent of online sales – $799 million – was rung up on mobile devices, Adobe said.
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Shopping until you drop may very well become a thing of the past.
