Online retail is stronger than ever when it comes to holiday shopping.
While it’s too early to measure the success of the holiday shopping season overall, studies are showing a strong performance in e-commerce compared with in-store sales.
Shoppers spent $3.45 billion on the Monday after Thanksgiving, known as “Cyber Monday,” for the online shopping deals available, according to Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks online retail performance.
The sales mark the largest online sales day in history, surpassing Black Friday’s sales of $3.34 billion and surpassing last year’s e-commerce figures by more than 10 percent. And in the period from Thanksgiving to the Sunday that followed, online retail sales in the United States totaled $9.36 billion, an increase of more than 16 percent compared with the same period last year.
The figures signal the shift toward e-commerce from in-store shopping as consumers increasingly turn to the internet to research products and find the best deals.
Meanwhile, sales over the Thanksgiving weekend in brick-and-mortar stores were down 4.2 percent from last year, and traffic to those stores was down 4.4 percent, according to RetailNext, a firm that analyzes in-store retail sales and traffic. That was in line with expectations, the company wrote in a blog post.
Shoppers are increasingly comfortable shopping online and via mobile devices, experts say, but as deals and promotions are spread out over November and December, days that were previously heavy on foot traffic, such as Black Friday, are losing their significance.
“This year, shoppers were bombarded with Black Friday ads – particularly from automobile companies – before the candy corn was eaten after Halloween, and Cyber Monday itself started early on Thanksgiving Day,” the blog post said. “As such, shoppers are getting their deals and shopping earlier in the season.”
Strong discounts and promotions have encouraged shoppers over the holiday season so far, said the National Retail Federation, but shoppers also spent less individually. Average spending per person over Thanksgiving weekend totaled $289.19, down slightly from $299.60 last year.
“It was a strong weekend for retailers but an even better weekend for consumers, who took advantage of some really incredible deals,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “In fact, over one-third of shoppers said 100 percent of their purchases were on sale.”
With plenty of online sales and store hours that began Thanksgiving afternoon and continued late on Black Friday night, the early morning Black Friday frenzy of years past was noticeably absent this year.
The NRF said its survey found that less than 15 percent of consumers arrived at the stores by 6 a.m. or earlier on Black Friday. Nearly 29 percent of shoppers headed out to stores after 10 a.m. on Black Friday, up from 24 percent last year. Early Thanksgiving Day in-store shopping dropped by 19 percent — about 7 percent of consumers went to stores before 5 p.m., but shopping on Thanksgiving itself was up 1 percent.
That was clear in the Bay Area, where shopping centers throughout the East and South bays had ample parking available early Black Friday morning, and the scene was mellow for major retailers such as Kohl’s, Best Buy and Target in the early hours. Traffic seemed to pick up in some places as the day wore on.
“It was different this year,” shopper Linda Onibokun told this newspaper on Black Friday morning, having finished her shopping by 8 a.m. at the Sunvalley Shopping Center in Concord. “It was less crowded, and the deals were much better.”
Shoppers in the tech-savvy Bay Area are also more likely to turn to mobile and online commerce than others. Roughly 40 percent of shoppers in the United States plan to make a purchase online this season, but in the Bay Area, that average jumps to 58 percent, according to Mike Johnson, Bay Area retail and distribution lead at Deloitte.
In the Bay Area, at least 80 percent plan to use mobile devices for holiday shopping in some way, either to find store locations, research products or buy.
