Sales totaled a projected $20.43 billion over the four-day period. For October 2015 sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services – the so-called core retail sales figure – rose 0.2 percent from a year earlier. Almost 102 million people said they shopped in stores over the weekend, while more than 103 million people shopped online.
Advertisement
Greater use of e-commerce and extended discounting from retailers are changing the traditional patterns of holiday spending, multiple studies revealed.
Of those who shopped in stores over the weekend, 72.8 percent 74.2 million shoppers said they shopped on Black Friday, the biggest day of the weekend; another 34.6 million (34 percent) said they shopped on Thanksgiving Day and 46.8 million (45.9 percent) shopped on Saturday, the NRF says.
A separate NRF survey found that more than 121 million shoppers, or about 49.5 percent of consumers, plan to shop online on so-called Cyber Monday, which takes place on November 30 this year.
Cyber Monday was once the premiere time to catch savings online, but this year, the entire weekend proved to be fruitful for bargain shoppers. The Chicago-based research firm gathers sales and traffic data from receipt information and devices in stores.
This year, fewer shoppers headed to malls to snatch up Black Friday deals (and walk off that extra helping of potatoes) than in years past, but that doesn’t mean their wallets weren’t getting a work out. Most retailers offered deals prior to Thanksgiving-some as early as Halloween-which has also impacted the drop in Black Friday deals, and the number of shoppers, this year. This year, the NRF is forecasting sales growth of 3.7 percent, down from 4.1 percent in 2014, a deceleration it has attributed to slow job creation and household income growth. Both Target as well as Walmart have already said that they were expecting some record turnouts this year as well.
Consumer confidence was improving coming into the holiday season, and yet major chains such as Macy’s Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters and Dillard’s reported poor earnings results in mid-November, suggesting that retailers were still having some trouble persuading shoppers to make purchases.
Advertisement
The data underscores the growing comfort level of online shopping as more people turn to their smartphones and other devices to browse cyberspace. “It’s a good jump start to the holiday shopping season”. For weeks now, Adobe reports on-line retailers have been hitting consumers with emails heralding their planned discounts, contributing to on-line sales increasing by more than 14 percent on Black Friday compared to a year ago.
