Thanksgiving, Black Friday sales up 9 percent

More than 154 million consumers shopped in stores and online, which was about 3 million more than a year ago, according to a National Retail Federation survey released Sunday.

During the holiday shopping weekend that began on Thanksgiving and the next day’s Black Friday, more people skipped the mayhem in stores and bought online.

Radic shopped elsewhere in the mall for kids’ clothing for Christmas gifts; she said she wanted to feel the material and check out the sales rack in person.

“At the mass merchant level, they went hard and heavy right from the get-go, and they stayed there”, said Nicholson. “But as consumers, and as buyers, all of us would like to get a deal on things we’d like to buy”. “I’m not afraid (to spend more)”.

“With the full day total coming in at $3.34 billion, Black Friday may have just dethroned Cyber Monday’s position as the largest online shopping day of the year.

While 97.2% of the conversation around these two sale days has been generated by Black Friday, Cyber Monday only accounts for a meagre 2.8%. According to Google, searches for in-store deals were also popular on mobile devices, with customers using mobile search as a “door-to-the-store”.

Some shoppers skipped long lines and crowded parking lots to shop online. More people are buying their holiday swag over the internet than ever before, and that’s validated by the thinning crowds at physical stores.

Cyber Monday is likely to have seen a small increase in the number of consumers shopping, up from 121m to 122m on NRF figures.

She felt like prices were better than in past years.

She also counsels patience for the best deal.

“I think people were sort of holding their breath with the election to see what would happen with the stock market”, she said.

Tablets had some of the steepest price markdowns online this Black Friday, with an average discount of 25.4 percent, Adobe said. And Target offered an extra 15 percent on Sunday and Monday – both online and in stores. Adobe said Black Friday became the first day in retail history to drive more than $1 billion on mobile revenue, with shoppers spending $1.2 billion on mobile devices, up 33% from previous year.

Although Black Friday has evolved, it continues to be the biggest day of the year in terms of shopper traffic, according to a separate report from consumer analytics firm ShopperTrak. They hit the stores Thursday night and Friday morning and started browsing online Saturday.

“I checked online and didn’t really find anything I wanted”, said Weitz, 24.

Shoppers who once used their savvy with coupons and phone trees for information about the best deals have traded those skills for working deals with cash-back retailer link sites, free delivery, cash reward credit cards and – still – coupons, but the online variety.