Black Friday Sales Down More Than $1 Billion

“I did do it when we were poorer”, she said. Neiman Marcus Group, for instance, suffered Web outages on Friday and Saturday, leaving customers frustrated.

It appears American’s are wasting no time getting into the holiday spirit.

It’s possible we’ve passed Peak Black Friday. Of those who shopped in stores over the weekend, 73% (74.2 million) said they shopped on Black Friday.

“I am really starting to like it”, Wilson said.

The NRF’s results also underscored the growing power of the Internet.

As much as anything, the changing way of holiday shopping appears driven by a rise in the number of on-line shoppers, with more consumers now zeroing in on targeted deals via their smartphones, tablets and computers.

Consumers knew what they wanted, especially Thanksgiving shoppers.

A separate NRF survey found that more than 121 million shoppers, or about 49.5 percent of consumers, plan to shop online on so-called Cyber Monday, which takes place on November 30 this year.

But a change in methodology means that figure isn’t comparable to those from prior years. Black Friday is generally not the year’s biggest shopping day. She said JC Penney opened at 3 p.m. Thursday.

One shopper camped in a tent outside the Nashville West Best Buy, and one shopper slept in her vehicle outside the Best Buy on Gallatin Pike. “It’s been steady but no overwhelming”.

The retail holiday is expected to test Amazon’s warehouses, with Lucy Robertson, general manager of Amazon’s Peterborough warehouse, expecting a huge increase in consumer demand. That’s below last year’s 4.1 percent growth.

Some 37 percent of respondents saw a downturn in sales, she says, while 20.8 percent saw flat sales. Thanksgiving alone constituted $1.7 billion and online spending on Black Friday increased 14% compared to 2014. “Shoppers have seen promotions roll out for the past several weeks, but if the price is right on Cyber Monday, they’ll definitely show up ready to spend”. “You want to get people in the store”. It also said it’s asking shoppers different questions, which has led it to report numbers that vary significantly from those it’s gotten in previous years.

‘More than £760m was spent online with Visa cards, up almost 25 per cent on a year ago, ‘ continued the spokesperson, adding that over £2.2bn is set to be spent in the United Kingdom alone over the four day shopping period.