“While more than 90 percent of shopping purchases are made in-store, shoppers’ use of mobile devices to research before and assist them during their shopping trips is now standard practice”, said John Dee, Chief Operating Officer of PlaceWise Media.
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NY _ Sales at retailers’ brick-and-mortar locations suffered during the weekend after Thanksgiving as more shoppers skipped the malls and bought online. Even with the slip in sales, “Black Friday will end up being the number one sales day in retail this year”.
ShopperTrak said Thanksgiving and Black Friday created $1.8 billion and $10.4 billion in deals individually.
“While the holiday season opened a little softer than anticipated, Thanksgiving and Black Friday both posted strong online spending totals that surpassed $1 billion on desktop computers and grew at the rate we had expected”, comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. Almost 102 million people said they shopped in stores over the Thanksgiving weekend, while 103 million shopped online.
Adobe reported on Friday that online sales increased 18 percent to a record $4.45 billion during the combined Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend. It seems that, as reported by U.S. News Money, the best deals are available only in limited quantities; sometimes only two of each item will be in stock per store.
But in the push to make it all Christmas shopping all the time, Wal-Mart actually got a late start.
So much so that it beats last year’s growth.
However, as consumer demands increase and online shopping becomes more and more prevalent, sales have been pushed further and further forward until they have encroached upon Thanksgiving holiday hours.
ShopperTrak said sales may have declined from 2014.
At the J. Crew at the Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington, New York – where signs advertised up to 50 percent off for items in the sale section -Nancy Moley, a personal stylist, said Black Friday was going “comfortably, not insane”.
The company said traffic between midnight and 8am was up by 9% compared to a year ago.
“As a tip, I would say bring your phone to the mall because everyone else is, too”, Dee said, adding that the most crowded time to visit a mall on Black Friday is between noon to 4 p.m. The National Retail Federation estimated 99.8 million shoppers were out for Black Friday today.
Campbell said her husband was a bit concerned about her shopping plans but hadn’t tried to cut up her credit cards just yet.
Spending is predicted to soar by 31% on past year as stores offer discounts exclusively on the internet following the Black Friday weekend. But overall, the group sticks by its pre-Black Friday prediction that sales in November and December will rise 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion.
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Many consumers remain focused on discounts. There may also be “social backlash against store openings on the holiday”.
