Black Friday:
Shoppers up, dollars down
Number of shoppers rises 13 percent, to 195 million
By Toni Fitzgerald
Nov 30, 2009
The start to the holiday shopping season brought mixed results Friday, both online and off.
More people came out searching for post-Thanksgiving bargains, lured by early-bird specials at the nation's biggest retailers.
But they spent less money per person than last year, leading to essentially flat sales.
The National Retail Federation's Black Friday shopping survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that 195 million Americans visited stores and web sites over Black Friday weekend. That's 23 million, or 13 percent, more than last year.
But they spent an average $343.31 per person, well down from $372.57 last year. Total spending was $41.2 billion, up just a tad from last year's $41 billion.
Meanwhile, despite a Nielsen Online survey earlier this month that found that fewer people plan to do holiday shopping on the web this year, internet sales were up notably, 11 percent, over last year's Black Friday haul, according to comScore.
E-shoppers spent $595 million, making it the second-biggest web shopping day of the year. That adds to a generally rosy picture for online sales, which are up 3 percent over 2008, to $10.57 billion, for the holiday season that began Nov. 1.
And money spent on Black Friday orders jumped 35 percent over last year, according to Coremetrics, an online marketing optimization company.
So what does all this mean? Probably that Americans are most concerned about finding deals and sticking to budgets. They chose their shopping targets carefully.
The NRF survey found that nearly one-third of Black Friday shoppers were at stores by 5 a.m., compared to 23.3 percent last year.
Nearly half of shoppers, 49.4 percent, went to department stores, which have been particularly aggressive in cutting prices to lure in business.
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