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Washington – Now that shoppers have visited stores and delved into online deals, they are less anxious about finding what they want – and about how much they’ll have to pay.
New consumer research released this morning from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics, tracked consumer shopping over the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. More than 80% of respondents said the promotional and pricing environment was the same as or better than a year ago.
In addition, nearly 70% of consumers now believe based on their experiences so far that they’re going to be able to get the items they need and want. Further, if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for, they are confident they will find an alternative product at another retailer.
Nearly 180 million Americans shopped during the five-day holiday shopping period from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, exceeding NRF’s initial expectation of 155 million based on a pre-Thanksgiving week survey. The figure compares with 186.4 million shoppers in 2020 and is in line with the average of the last four years.
Consumers began their shopping earlier than ever this year, noted NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay.
“Thanksgiving weekend and Black Friday are closer to half-time than kick-off,” he said during a press conference earlier today about the results. “We know there’s still more shopping to come. More than 80% of respondents expect to receive more deals.”
Other takeaways from the survey:
Foot traffic: The number of people who shopped in stores was approximately 104.9 million, up from 92.3 million in 2020.
E-commerce: The overall number of online shoppers decreased to a total of 127.8 million from last year’s record of 145.4 million.
Five-day spend: Thanksgiving weekend shoppers spent an average of $301.27 on holiday-related purchases such as gifts, décor, apparel and toys. That was down slightly from $311.75 in 2020. As in previous years, most ($215.40) of that amount was spent directly on gifts. The biggest spenders were 45- to 54-year-olds, who spent an average of $364.
An early start to the season: The vast majority (84%) of holiday shoppers reported they had already started shopping before the weekend and have completed more than half (52%) of their holiday purchases on average.
Destinations: Online was the most popular channel for shopping (46%), followed by department stores (44%), grocery stores (39%), clothing stores (32%), electronics stores (28%) and discounters (26%).
Black Friday: Black Friday was the top day for in-store shopping with 66.5 million shoppers. It also surpassed Cyber Monday for e-commerce volume, with 88 million shopping online the day after Thanksgiving. This trend was consistent with recent years, Shay noted.
Small Business Saturday: Seventy-one percent of respondents said they shopped on Saturday specifically to support small businesses.
Hot categories: Top gift purchases over the weekend included clothing and accessories (bought by 51% of those surveyed), toys (32%), gift cards/certificates (28%), books/music/movies/video games (27%) and electronics (24%).
Shay said the weekend data supports NRF’s forecast that holiday season sales for the period from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 will grow between 8.5% and 10.5% to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion.
The information released today came from a survey of 5,759 adult consumers and was conducted from Nov. 24-29. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points.
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