Online Retail Passes In-Store Shopping For Black Friday Weekend

(Ann Fisher)
Going online for your Black Friday sales fix is now just as popular as trudging out to the mall to shop, according to a new survey from the National Retail Federation.

According to the survey results [PDF], more Americans did their shopping online than in stores each day of the holiday weekend.

This includes Black Friday, the most-hyped in-store shopping day of the year. The survey says that 72.8% of respondents did in-store shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, a hair shy of the 73.1% who shopped online.

That was by far the narrowest margin between the two shopping methods. Online also beat out bricks-and-mortar on Thanksgiving (39.8% vs. 34%), and on Saturday (49% vs. 45.9%) and Sunday (32.9% vs. 19.1%).

The huge disparity on Sunday’s numbers seems to indicate that consumers get exhausted with the physical process of shopping — driving, parking, browsing, waiting in line — but they still want to look for good deals while they’re available.

According to the survey, slightly more than half of the in-store shoppers said they couldn’t pass up the savings. This seems to indicate that price is the key factor in their decision. Meanwhile, only 31.2% said they hit the stores because it’s a tradition. Those people will continue to show up every year, but you can expect online shopping to only grow more popular as the savings-oriented consumers realize they can get most, if not all, the in-store deals from the comfort of their home.

The NRF survey does give credence to some retailers’ insistence on opening their doors Thanksgiving evening. When breaking down the hourly in-store visits on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the single biggest time for shopping was not Black Friday morning, but 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving — the hour when several major retailers opened for business.

More than 13% of people who shopped in stores this weekend showed up at that time, significantly more than other popular hours like midnight (4%) and 6 a.m. (5%), or 9 a.m. (7.8%) on Friday.


by Chris Morran via Consumerist

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