As of now, about 34 percent of online sales are coming from mobile.
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According to the Thanksgiving Weekend Survey of NRF, more than 151 million shopped either at stores or made online purchases at home, more than what was predicted by an earlier survey. It’s enough to have IHS director of consumer economics Chris Christopher predicting that holiday season e-commerce sales will jump 11.7 percent this year to about $95 billion, up from last year’s 10.9 percent gain.
Adobe’s online shopping data also revealed that $1.73 billion was spent online on Thanksgiving Day, which shows a 25% increase from Thanksgiving past year, and $2.72 billion was spent on Black Friday, a 14% increase.
ShopperTrak attributed weaker in-store sales in part to curtailed Thanksgiving and Black Friday store hours compared to years past.
Whilst some retailers have started to shun the event, James Miller, senior retail consultant at Experian Marketing Services, said the big increase in spend shows that the date is likely to continue to be a permanent fixture in the online retail calendar in the United Kingdom, despite the lower than expected footfall in bricks and mortar stores. That is down from about $381 over the same weekend previous year, although the NRF said those numbers are not comparable because it changed the survey’s methodology.
If the lines at Target or Macy’s this Black Friday seemed shorter than in years past, shoppers have the Internet to thank. Pam Goodfellow, principal analyst at Prosper Insights & Analytics, the firm that conducts the surveys, said changes in consumer habits needed to be captured with new survey questions. It estimated in-store shoppers spent about $12.1 billion over the two-day period, which would mark a decline from a year ago. Of course, Black Friday technically hadn’t even begun by that time, but the sales did, and buyers were out in full force.
That shift has caused the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, to overhaul the way it tracks shopper spending and visits during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend – something it’s been doing for more than a decade. Online and physical in-store purchases were about equal.
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Many consumers remain focused on discounts. “With that in mind, we still maintain our 2.4 percent increase in sales for brick-and-mortar retail this holiday season”. He said sales were strong in items such as active apparel, women’s dresses, handbags and cosmetics gift sets.
