Where Did Consumers Shop on Thanksgiving and Black Friday Weekend?

On Sunday afternoon, however, parking space was sparse at Oakland Mall, and the common mall areas were packed with shoppers.

Both women said Black Friday hype seems to have diminished.

Consumer confidence was improving coming into the holiday season, and yet major chains such as Macy’s Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters and Dillard’s reported poor earnings results in mid-November, suggesting that retailers were still having some trouble persuading shoppers to make purchases.

Black Friday shopping is shifting from hours spent in line to more time online.

Wilson said she found Friday’s deals were still available Sunday.

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

Half of those polled (50.4%) said they shopped in stores over the weekend because the deals were too good to pass up; 31.2 percent said they shopped because it is a tradition, and 25.5 percent said it provides them with something to do over the holiday weekend.

While she enjoys shopping at physical stores, online retailers are becoming more attractive. “It is so convenient”.

And shoppers have more information about deals than ever. About 121 million people plan to shop online Monday, down from 126.9 million past year.

The moves are significant because retail experts, investors and economists look to the group’s Thanksgiving weekend numbers to provide an indication of the mood of consumers heading into the holiday shopping season, a period of historically strong spending.

Consumers knew what they wanted, especially Thanksgiving shoppers.

Accurate comparisons can not be made between this year and last because the poll by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the NRF used a different methodology than in 2014. Even with the slip in sales, “Black Friday will end up being the number one sales day in retail this year”.

Barkley said the store opened at 6 a.m. Friday and traffic was slow until about 1 p.m. when business “started rocking”.

“So far the weekend has been going well”, Hayes said. This year, the NRF is forecasting sales growth of 3.7 percent, down from 4.1 percent in 2014, a deceleration it has attributed to slow job creation and household income growth. For weeks now, Adobe reports on-line retailers have been hitting consumers with emails heralding their planned discounts, contributing to on-line sales increasing by more than 14 percent on Black Friday compared to a year ago. And sales on Thanksgiving dropped by the same percentage, to $1.8 billion.

“They don’t browse”, Dalto said.

“This year the concern will certainly be very specific, around the usual crowd management, but very specific on the increased terror concerns around the world”, New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton told WWD last week.