Black Friday Sales Down, Thanksgiving Sales Surge

(IDEX Online) – American consumers spent $9.1 billion on Black Friday, a decline of 7 percent compared with the same day last year, said data research firm ShopperTrak.

However, sales on Thanksgiving surged 24 percent on the year to $3.2 billion, and sales for the two days are seen down just 0.5 percent on 2013 to $12.3 billion. The figures do not include online sales.

ShopperTrak reported that for the second year running people increasingly avoided the notorious Black Friday crowds by heading for the stores on Thanksgiving Day. Many large retail stores decided to stay open longer on Thanksgiving.

"People are changing their behavior," said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak' s co-founder. "We've seen this for two years in a row now. Stores opening on Thanksgiving are simply eroding sales from Black Friday."

Martin believes that the figures provide evidence that consumers are waiting until later in the season to do most of their holiday shopping, citing last year's experience where Black Friday weekend sales climbed just 1 percent from the previous year, but sales for the entire season ultimately increased by 3.1 percent.

“There is a significant amount of energy left in the consumer,” he said in a news release. And more big shopping days remain, he said. That includes the final Saturday before Christmas, typically the biggest shopping day of the year.

Meanwhile, a report from IBM said online sales on Thanksgiving Day jumped 14.3 percent and for Black Friday increased by 9.5 percent on the year, with more than one of every four transactions being made via a smartphone or tablet.

The National Retail Federation predicts that sales during the critical holiday sales season of November and December will reach close to $617 billion, which would be a rise of 4.1 percent on the same period of 2013.

Reports over the weekend suggested that despite a strengthening economic recovery and significantly lower gas prices that are putting money back into consumers' pockets, shoppers are still cautious about spending.

Some analysts said that retailers had improved the integration of their brick-and-mortar stores with their online sites, offering the same deals on both and providing shoppers the option of shopping online and picking up their purchases at a nearby store.