Black Friday sales slip from year prior: ShopperTrak

Consumer spending at brick-and-mortar retail locations in the US fell 10 percent to $20.4 billion over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, according to ShopperTrak.

ShopperTrak, a company that analyzes shopper behavior, projects $12.1 billion in combined sales for just Thursday and Black Friday, a dip from 2014. The firm compiled data from 1,200 retail chains.

To be sure, early sales numbers can be unreliable and more accurate measures won’t be available until the U.S. Department of Commerce releases spending figures in the coming weeks.

That’s a much larger increase than the 3.5 percent gain Christopher forecasts for total holiday retail sales, including both online and in traditional retail stores.

That trend has made it easier for retailers to offer bargains long before Thanksgiving, limiting the impact of Black Friday specials.

Over 103 million people said they shopped online, the NRF said on Sunday, topping the 102 million who said they shopped in stores this past weekend.

“Holiday shopping started well in advance of Thanksgiving weekend this year, but there’s no question people were still incredibly eager to get their hands on the deals that retailers were offering on electronics, apparel, toys and even small appliances”, said Prosper Principal Analyst Pam Goodfellow, in the announcement.

“There’s a lot of strength in the consumer”, said Bill Martin, the co-founder of ShopperTrak.

Cyber Monday is the online equivalent of Black Friday, and is the biggest online shopping day of the year.

But those big-box stores and shopping malls probably aren’t going anywhere yet.

The upshot of this is that the phenomenon of Black Friday as a discrete event is dwindling, being replaced by an extended holiday shopping period that stretches from the end of October to Christmas itself. The way Rugaber wrote up his piece ensured that news of the economy’s continued malaise will remain elusive for low-information news consumers and, ultimately, low-information voters. The trade group said this was perhaps a sign that it’s getting easier to browse deals online and complete transactions on a mobile device – a process that was rather clunky on most sites just a few years ago.

Mobile sales accounted for 26% of the record-breaking $3.07 billion spent on Cyber Monday this year, according to Adobe.

ShopperTrak attributed weaker in-store sales in part to curtailed Thanksgiving and Black Friday store hours compared to years past. As Time reports, what attributes to this is that most people were less inclined to deal with huge crowds.