Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Brown Thursday–all the sales days associated with Thanksgiving are starting to blend together into one big giant shopping-fest. It feels like the anxiety of getting the best deals has replaced the anxiety of roasting the perfect bird (and having to chat with your drunk uncle).
Don’t worry–we’re here to help.
Another Black Friday has come and gone. There were crazy-good discounts, 12am start times, mile-long lines and a few violent incidents to boot. Now that all the dust–and buyers euphoria–has cleared see how the country fared on the year’s biggest shopping day, by the numbers.
$11.4 billion: Total money spent by shoppers at retail stores and malls on Black Friday, according to the AP.
$52.4 billion: Total money spent by shoppers over the Black Friday weekend, according to the National Retail Fund.
226 million: Record-breaking number of shoppers who visited retailers or shopped online over the weekend, reported by the NRF.
90: The percentage of shoppers who, according to a survey conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers, planned to buy items for themselves or their families, compared to 10 percent of shoppers who said they planned on buying gifts for others.
20: The number shoppers injured after a woman fired pepper spray into a crowd in order to clear a path to a crate of Xbox video game players at the Porter Ranch Walmart in California, according to CBS News.
This year, Black Friday is shaping up to be an even bigger shopping extravaganza than ever before. Macy’s, Target, Best Buy and Kohl’s will be opening at midnight instead of the crack of dawn. Toys “R” Us and Wal-Mart are ignoring the whole “Friday” part altogether and opening their doors at 9pm and 10pm (respectively) on Thanksgiving Day. According to a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, stores and malls can expect up to 10% more shoppers than last year–that’s up to 152 million shoppers over the course of the weekend. But while retailers and shoppers are upping the ante this year, some people are beginning to wonder whether, in these tough economic times, shopping on Black Friday is such a smart idea in the first place.
As hard as we find it to comprehend, Thanksgiving is mere days away. (Seriously where did 2009 go?) And with it comes the day after which of course we all know as “Black Friday.” For obvious reasons, people who track such numbers are going to be looking very carefully at how retail fares this year. Read more →
The reports on Black Friday are in, and it looks like the day wasn’t the retail bust everyone feared. According to ShopperTrak (it’s a sort of newswire for retail information), nationwide Black Friday sales were up 3% compared to last year, with the South seeing the best improvement (3.4%) and the Northeast seeing the worst Read more →
