With Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us and the bulk of the holiday shopping season still to go, it’s a good time to look back and see if we can spot any trends that might give us an indication of how successful this season will be for retailers. NRF and BIGresearch’s Black Friday shopping survey shows mixed results. While the number of in-store and online shoppers jumped from 172 million to 195 million, the average spending of those shoppers dropped from $372.57 to $343.31, over the same period last year. The numbers indicate that people are shopping, but that bargains are a very big draw this year.
One bit of good news was in online sales. Online sales were up 13.7% this Cyber Monday over Cyber Monday 2008, according to an analysis by Coremetrics . We’ve noticed this year that the line between in-store promotions on Black Friday and the week-end following it, and online promotions starting on Cyber Monday continues to blur. More and more we’re seeing retailers offer the same deals starting at the same time both in the stores and online. Many retailers, including JC Penney, Sears, and Kmart, who would normally have been more likely to hold off on online promotions until Monday, to keep the stores full, instead strongly pushed promotions starting early on Black Friday. This resulted in an 11% increase in online sales on Black Friday, according to Comscore.
Comscore’s data shows that Amazon.com was the most visited destination for online shoppers on Black Friday, and that they reported a solid 28% growth over Black Friday 2008. After Amazon, the most visited sites on Black Friday were Walmart (up 22% compared to last year), Apple.com (up 39% over last year), Target (up 2% from last year) and Best Buy (up a respectable 24%).
In Brick and Mortar retail, department stores were the big winner, with the NRF survey reporting that nearly half of holiday shoppers (49.4%) had visited at least one, up 12.9% from last year. The NRF survey also shows that 31.2% of in-store shoppers were there by 5:00 am, an 8% jump in “doorbuster” bargain shoppers compared to last year. In Minneapolis, the Mall of America, one of the largest malls in the US, had an encouraging 325,000 visitors on Friday and Saturday, reported to be the highest volume of visitors in 17 years.
The start of the holiday shopping season has not shown a tremendous improvement in retail growth. However, not all the news is bad. People are shopping even if they are spending less, and holiday e-Commerce growth is outpacing holiday brick and mortar growth, with Comscore predicting 3% growth for e-commerce this holiday season. Despite those positive highlights, the NRF said Sunday that they were still sticking to their prediction of a 1% decline in sales for this year’s holiday shopping season, and we still expect to have to wait until 2010 to see positive growth for most retail enterprises as a whole.