As expected, the recently concluded Thanksgiving weekend brought in dozens of shoppers. However a study recently published by Adobe highlights an interesting trend: more and more people are shopping Black Friday online rather than in-store.
The data a record $4.45 billion was spent online during the retail blitz, with $2.72 billion alone coming from Black Friday. A lot of online shopping was done via mobile, with 53% of all online shopping visits during Black Friday conducted on smartphones or tablets.
On Thanksgiving Day, mobile browsing exceeded Desktop for the first time with a 57%-43% edge. Among actual online purchases, 37% of total sales came from mobile devices. All in all, people spent around $639 million on mobile alone last Thursday, a new record.
"US consumers have turned into digital shopping ninjas this holiday season as retailers continue to adjust to a huge influx of smartphone shoppers." Said Adobe Principal Analyst Tamara Gaffney.
Another study published by the National Retail Federation echoed this fact. NRF President Matthew Shay said:
"We recognize the Thanksgiving weekend shopping experience is much different than it used to be as just as many people want that unique, exclusive online deal as they do that in-store promotion. It is clear that the age-old holiday tradition of heading out to stores with family and friends is now equally matched in the new tradition of looking online for holiday savings opportunities."
According to the NRF's figures, approximately 41 million people (39.8%) said they shopped online on Thanksgiving Day and 75.3 million (73.1%) shopped online on Black Friday.
The big beneficiary of the increased interest in online shopping was Amazon. TechCrunch, citing figures from Slice Intelligence, said that the e-commerce giant accounted for 35.7% of all online spending during the 27th. In contrast, Best Buy, the next on the list, managed just 8.23%
