Black Friday Spending Increases, More Consumers Opt for Online Shopping

“You can check online”, she said.

“Now, I’m looking for the deals online and going out to stores to get them”, said Gentry, who was joined his father and mother. The National Retail Federation expected about 30 million people to shop on Thanksgiving, compared with 99.8 million people on Black Friday.

Online sales on Thanksgiving increased 26% over previous year, driven heavily by mobile devices, which accounted for 40% of online sales, according to IBM Watson Trend, which tracks spending by monitoring millions of transactions from retail websites.

McDaniel says more and more Black Friday deals are now available on your phone or laptop. Shoppers tumbled into the stores stalking that flawless gift and that killer price.

Nia Darrell, a 23-year-old student, was shopping for coats and handbags at the store with two friends. All those factors point to a need for heavy discounting – good for consumers, but not so great for retailers’ profits.

Some stores are pulling back on their Thanksgiving weekend hours this year and electing to spread more of their specials throughout the month.

However, considering the ice on the roads, they were still happy with the turnout.

State Senate Republican Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa says shoppers would find even bigger bargains if Wisconsin’s minimum markup law is repealed.

“We’ve planned this event for more than a year”.

“Then, at 6:00 p.m., we turned on the Black Friday magic in stores”. There are also four regional command centers monitoring specific activity in their markets.

But as the lines between these promotional days blur, shoppers are finding it more hard to snag the best deals. Inside the stores, live feeds at checkout lines monitor for interruptions. We have our stores set by Wednesday night before we leave.

The shopping got started in some stores Thursday.

While not part of the Thanksgiving weekend, any discussion of the start of the holiday shopping season is not complete without the mention of Cyber Monday, or the first Monday after Thanksgiving. Big-screen televisions, gaming consoles and computer were driving the rise. The company also said it sold an iPad every second throughout the day, on average. Want even more deals?

Notably, Thanksgiving, which was the third-busiest shopping day during Thanksgiving weekend in 2014, will attract the fewest shoppers in 2015.

As for how major retailers in the US are expected to perform this holiday season – Walmart, Macy’s and Nordstrom are not optimistic that the numbers will be very strong. No more. Super fast smart phones that allow consumers to shop anytime, anywhere means some retailers are extending Cyber Monday to Sunday while others are extending Black Friday into a full week’s worth of sales.