USA store sales down slightly for Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Some companies struggled to keep their websites up and running on Black Friday, traditionally held to coincide with the end of the American holiday of Thanksgiving, as huge numbers of people logged on to try to get the best deals.

Rowdy shoppers, often pushing and shoving to get at what they wanted, jostled for items as they crammed the aisles of stores during the dark mayhem of Black Friday sales … is what many thought they would hear after the fact.

While the predicted in-store chaos of previous year failed to materialise, analysts have forecast that the flood of customers snapping up deals online could lead to a total four-day spend of £3.2 billion.

Men were bigger shoppers than women last year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, whereas Boxing Day last year was a bigger day for female online shoppers than for men.

Online shopping has become an easier alternative than hitting the stores, since deals can be used through an iPad, smartphone or other tools that connect to the internet. Online sales jumped 14.3% on Friday compared with past year, according to Adobe, which tracked activity on 4,500 retail websites. Smartphones generated a record 22 percent share of sales, 70 percent more than in 2014. iPhones and iPads continued to drive the majority of mobile sales with 67 and 84 percent respectively.

Shoppers are continuing to change where and how they spend during the holidays and this Black Friday was no different. At one store on Long Island, New York, lines snaked around the block and crowds quickly built around the 60% off sweater tables and the home goods department, where J.C. Penney slashed prices on crock pots and blenders for early shoppers.

“You will see all these sales throughout November they call Black Friday sales but they’re not really Black Friday”.

However, there were a few die-hard Black Friday shoppers out and about in the wee hours of Friday morning.

Sales and foot traffic since the holiday promotions kicked off Thursday are up from previous year at the Kmart in West View, said store manager Jodie Strother. Thanksgiving Day sales were up 25%, at $1.73 billion.

“US consumers have turned into digital shopping ninjas”, Adobe analyst Tamara Gaffney said.

Jeff Simpson, a principal at Deloitte, also said doorbusters – fat discounts on hot items that once drew shoppers in for store openings – are losing their “umph”. In comparison, only 87 million shopped on Black Friday.

According to the National Retail Federation, more than 900 retailers are offering discounts and deals for Cyber Monday.

Chris Christopher, director of consumer economics at consulting firm IHS, said many retailers’ warehouses and store shelves were overstocked heading into the fall. “Mobile sales were also strong, with 36.2 percent of all online sales coming from mobile devices, an increase of almost 30 percent over a year ago”, reads IBM’s report.