NRF: Weekend Shopping Tops 2012; More Cyber Shoppers Go Mobile (Dec. 2, 2013)
Shoppers and retailers continued to blur the line between Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday as consumer traffic on the holiday grew 27 percent, to nearly 45 million shoppers from 35 million a year ago, according to a National Retail Federation survey.
With nearly one-third of all shoppers over the weekend spending part of their Thanksgiving Thursday in stores, is the term Black Friday starting to lose its meaning? “Black Friday has certainly changed, but it’s not dead,” Kathy Grannis, NRF spokesperson, tells Paybefore.
“The fact that Thanksgiving shopping has become more of a trend is in direct response to consumer demand,” she says. “Retailers will continue to offer special savings on Thanksgiving Day as long as their customers want those deals.”
Black Friday remained the busiest shopping day, with more than 65 percent of the weekend’s shoppers taking to the stores—92 million shoppers this year versus 89 million in 2012—and the NRF estimates more than 141 million consumers will have shopped over the Thanksgiving weekend, up from 139 million in 2012.
“Sales were spread out over the entire weekend, and we expect Cyber Monday to be even bigger for online shoppers,” Grannis says.
Today, which is known as Cyber Monday because it has become the biggest day for online sales, more than 131 million consumers plan to shop online, up from 129 million last year, according to the NRF. Of those cyber shoppers, 24.8 million of them said they will use their mobile devices, a 22 percent increase from the 20.4 million last year, and a huge increase from 3.7 million in 2009.
