What is known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday was extended this year to 10 days, with online retailers continuing their discounts throughout the week. What do the online shopping numbers for post-Thanksgiving sales tell us about the state of online shopping?
It’s important to remember that the data is recent and fresh, many analyzers point out. The real numbers will not be available until all the stores report their sales numbers.
Black Friday
- 226 million shoppers visited stores and shopped online in the 4 days of the Thanksgiving weekend, compared with 212 million a year ago.
- The average spending rose as well, to $398.62 per shopper, up from 365.34 last year.
- Overall sales climbed 6.6% this year and stood at $11.4 billion. Up nearly $1 billion from last year. It was the largest amount spent in one day since 2007.
“Black Friday has evolved from an early morning shopping activity to a late night entertainment,” says Ellen Davis, spokeswoman at The National Retail Federation. “A lot of people stayed up until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to go shopping, and then went to bed.”
Not everyone.
- Online shopping on Black Friday jumped 26% to $816 million. Compared with $648 million this past year, such a big jump is unprecedented. The year to year growth in 2010 was only 9%.
- 50 million Americans visited online stores. The most visited were Amazon.com, Wall-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Apple.
Online sales increased much more than the store sales, with stores open at 10PM Thanksgiving day, pepper spraying and bone crushing included.
Cyber Monday:
The strong sales continued into Cyber Monday. This past Monday was crowned ‘the biggest online shopping day ever.’
IBM’s Benchmark research firm published these numbers:
- Spending online was up by 33% from last year.
- The average spending per customer was $198 per order, up $5 from last year.
- People are using tablets and smartphones to shop as well. Traffic from mobile devices was 10.8% of online commerce.
- What is even more impressive is the sales using mobile devices were up to 6.6% from all online sales, an increase from 2.3% in 2010.
Experts say the numbers point to the fact that Americans are growing more and more comfortable with online shopping. The mobile shopping increased thanks to companies embracing the tablet, with 5.2% of tablet shoppers making a purchase.
Considering the top 50 online retailers, J.C. Penny, Apple and Symantec performed the best as for availability and response time.
Sources:
I always have mixed feelings about how the health of the economy is based on how much people spend compared to other years, the statistics of the situation. Consumerism is the way we measure economic wellness. What about people who overspend and buy, buy, buy when the do not need, need, need. Indeed the current and coming technology will make purchasing like rubbing the genie’s bottle. I want it, I visualize it, I got it. Very romantic until the bill has to be paid. I am equally as guilty but at least I have narrowed my consumerism mostly to thrift stores. So, I feel better that I am at least involved in the reuse of garments rather than buying newly made ones probably by foreign labor for pennies a day.