The importance of the Thanksgiving weekend has also waned somewhat in recent years as retailers promote earlier in the season and demand shifts online. But there was some double-dipping. Overall, more than 151 million people shopped either in stores or online. According to the survey, 56.7% of smartphone owners used their phone to research products, purchase holiday items, check in-store availability and other mobile shopping activities while 57.7% of tablet owners used their device to browse holiday deals and purchase items. It’s also still overshadowedby China’s Singles’ Day, which broke records again this year withsales of 91.2bn yuan ($14.3bn) in a single day from just e-commerce giant Alibaba that’s more than triple the estimated online sales in the US. But don’t worry, we won’t tell.
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Almost 74.2 million people ventured out to shop on Black Friday and 34.6 million shopped on Thanksgiving Day, while 46.8 million made purchases on Saturday.
With so many people shopping online, there was no repeat of the unseemly scuffles witnessed in high street stores previous year as customers fought over big-ticket items. More buyers shopped online than in stores, reveals a survey of conducted by the National Retail Federation on Sunday.
For Black Friday, known for its early-morning lines to snare those limited-quantity doorbusters and jammed parking lots, it was at least the second straight year that in-store sales have fallen, according to ShopperTrak.
Shoppers kicked off the holiday 2015 buying season, both in-stores and online, over the Thanksgiving weekend. Meanwhile, sales data from ShopperTrak showed that Thanksgiving itself only generated $1.8 billion, compared to $10.4 billion on Black Friday.
The moves are significant because retail experts, investors and economists look to the group’s Thanksgiving weekend numbers to provide an indication of the mood of consumers heading into the holiday shopping season, a period of historically strong spending.
Two of the year’s biggest shopping days, Thanksgiving and Black Friday, saw big sales coming from online, about $4.5 billion, with about a third of that on mobile, according to a report by TechCrunch using Adobe Marketing data that tracks 4,500 sites.
“We know that they still have a savings account that’s greater than a year ago, so if they choose to spend, they can”, Terry Lundgren, chief executive of Macy’s, said in an interview Friday. A combined 85 percent of those who shopped did so online or with mobile, compared with 94 percent who shopped in physical stores.
Online shopping continues to appeal to more consumers.
The retail giant is introducing new deals every 10 minutes as part of its Cyber Monday offering which it has extended until Friday.
“It’s still a good performance for the weekend, given the growth that is being witnessed online as well”, ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin said.
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Shoppers are even starting to postpone some of their back-to-school purchases until later in the fall, in anticipation of such deals, Christopher said.
