Before Cyber Monday (officially) arrived, shoppers turned in droves to retailers on Black Friday and the rest of Thanksgiving weekend in a booming start to the holiday season.
In fact, Black Friday topped its online sales record this year, hitting $3.34 billion and up 21.6 percent from 2015, according to an Adobe report.
Thanksgiving weekend pulled in three million more shoppers this year, according to a National Retail Federation news release. Prosper Insights & Analytics conducted the survey of 4,330 consumers regarding their Thanksgiving weekend shopping plans.
Bargains seemed to hook people in, with one-third of shoppers indicating that everything they bought was on sale, according to the National Retail Federation’s president and CEO Matthew Shay. Meanwhile, half of consumers said the deals “were too good to pass up,” according to the same release.
But bargains have a price: Consumers spent an average of $289.19 this year, dipping from last year’s $299.60.
Additionally, e-commerce holiday shopping continued to flourish. The survey showed 44 percent of consumers shopped online, compared to just 40 percent in-store. Black Friday online shopping ticked up 1.3 percent to 74 percent. Of the consumers that did venture out over Thanksgiving weekend, 75 percent did so on Black Friday, an increase of 3.4 percent from 2015.
CNBC reports the gap between online and in-store shoppers is widening. Last year, about 103 million shoppers headed online compared to 102 million in-store. That number shifted to more than 108 million online this year and just 99.1 million in-store. What’s more, according to the National Retail Federation 56 percent of consumers with smartphones and 53 percent of those with tablets used their respective electronics during their holiday shopping.
This all bodes well for e-retailers like Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN), and e-commerce efforts from rivals like Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) ahead of final Cyber Monday numbers. Cyber Monday deals were already in full-swing this weekend: Wal-Mart’s Cyber Monday deals started at 12:01 a.m. EST Friday, reports the Associated Press.
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Black Friday Tops Online Sales Record, Report Says originally appeared on usnews.com
