Black Friday weekend has come and gone, meaning the holiday shopping season has officially started. Now that the flat-screen TVs and Elsa dolls have been snatched up by the most committed shoppers, let’s look at Black Friday in 2014 by the numbers. It’s all starting to feel a little blasé, no?
The National Retail Federation shared the breakdown of weekend shoppers on its website on Sunday with the help of a Thanksgiving Weekend Spending Survey conducted by Proper Insights & Analytics, and the results showed Black Friday to have a smaller estimated turnout than in 2013: 55.1 percent of holiday shoppers were making purchases in store and online on Thanksgiving weekend, compared to 58.7 percent in 2013. Overall shopper traffic estimates dropped 5.2 percent to 133.7 million unique holiday shoppers, from 141.1 million in 2013.
In explaining the drop in the number of shoppers, the NRF points to early promotions, online shopping and an improved economy. So naturally, when some Black Friday sales start out long before Friday, this diffuses the heavy day-of traffic, and the ability to shop online sales whenever we want has lessened the need to line up outdoors for a deal.
If more shoppers are shifting dollars online, they’re not making up for the drop in store visits: Overall, sales estimates for the Thanksgiving weekend fell 11.3 percent, year over year, to $50.9 billion, down from last year’s estimated $57.4 billion.
NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay believes that this year’s numbers aren’t a fluke, but the start of a new direction for Black Friday. He said in a statement:
A strengthening economy that changes consumers’ reliance on deep discounts, a highly competitive environment, early promotions and the ability to shop 24/7 online all contributed to the shift witnessed this weekend. We are excited to be witnessing an evolutionary change in holiday shopping by both consumers and retailers, and expect this trend to continue in the years ahead.
When Black Friday sales start on Thanksgiving, spark impossibly long lines , and even lead to physical altercations over the last 40″ TV, it’s no surprise that people who don’t rely on these one-time deals don’t buy in to Black Friday anymore. Where’s the dignity in saving a few dollars?
Oh, right – online.
And when it comes to online shopping, there’s no one-day urgency to incite a digital Black Friday frenzy; this is partly why Cyber Monday, Black Friday’s online counterpart, is on its way to becoming irrelevant.
The NRF’s survey provided a few more interesting tidbits: Clothing topped toys and electronics and became the most-shopped item of the weekend, for one. Department stores saw the most traffic, beating out online shopping by nearly 12 percent (50.7 versus 39.5). And when it comes to Black Friday demos, millennials aged 18 to 34 are the ones driving the numbers.
And that last statistic goes to show: it’s the old watching the young, not the rich watching the poor, when it comes to Black Friday fights.
Image via bibiphoto/Shutterstock
