ShopperTrak said Thanksgiving and Black Friday created $1.8 billion and $10.4 billion in deals individually. Guy Anker, managing editor of Moneysavingexpert.com, said: “The benefit of shopping online is it’s so much easier to compare deals with a few clicks so they know whether the price after that 20% discount really is the cheapest on the market”. Ultimately, while many question the ongoing relevance of Black Friday, it is still the biggest sales day of the year and signals the start of the holiday shopping season.. According to Fortune, physical stores still account for 90 percent of retail sales year-round.
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Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index, said, “US consumers have turned into digital shopping ninjas this holiday season as retailers continue to adjust to a huge influx of smartphone shoppers”.
In releasing its survey on Sunday, the National Retail Federation also said it was sticking by its forecast for retail sales growth of 3.7 percent in November and December, a slight deceleration from 4.1 percent growth over the holidays past year.
The NRF changed its surveying methodology and said the report is not comparable to last year’s numbers.
This year’s analysis of how people in the United States went shopping mad comes from Adobe, which looked at the two days and found that on the Friday alone people spent $2.72bn, with the remaining $1.73bn spent on Thanksgiving.
The average spending per person over the weekend was $299.60, with 76.6 percent of total purchases going towards gifts.
Overall, almost 102 million people say they shopped in stores over the Thanksgiving weekend, and more than 103 million say they shopped online.
“It is clear that the age-old holiday tradition of heading out to stores with family and friends is now equally matched in the new tradition of looking online for holiday savings opportunities,”, said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.
Those under 35 were most likely to shop over the weekend.
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Though merchants are still tabulating their weekend takes, and we’re still only midway through Cyber Monday, early returns are pointing to the leaders, and followers, of the four-day shopping frenzy. Some on Friday morning said they had already shopped online or visited the mall the night before. The average discount was slightly less than last year’s bargains-23 percent in 2015 vs. 25 percent in 2014-although discounts are expected to increase.
