Stores See Less Foot Traffic As Black Friday Shopping Moves Online

[Purveyor]

By HIROKO TABUCHI
New York Times News Service

In shops across the country, including the empty malls of Georgia and the “not too crazy” crowds at struggling J.Crew, the relative calm that accompanied Black Friday shopping this year belied a frenzy for deals – many of them on the Web.

EBay boasted that it was selling two hoverboards, the “it” item of the season, every minute. Wal-Mart said it had sold so many movies that it would take close to 3,000 years to watch all of them; many of its sales were online.

Adobe, which tracked more than 180 million visits to over 4,500 U.S. retail websites this Thanksgiving, said shoppers spent $1.73 billion online Thursday – or 22 percent more than 2014. Almost 60 percent of the traffic came from mobile devices.

Early online data for Black Friday showed less oomph. But then online sales grew about 15 percent between midnight and 11 a.m. Friday compared with the same time frame last year, with shoppers spending $822 million during that time period. Adobe expects Black Friday to generate $2.6 billion in total online sales, a 14 percent increase compared with the same day last year.

Brick-and-mortar stores saw less action. A preliminary reading of Black Friday by Retail Metrics declared traffic across apparel and department stores “uninspiring.” The analytics company now expects November sales at major retailers to fall 0.9 percent overall.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article46885665.html#storylink=cpy

[CoffeeCat]

1. This was the first time in fifteen years...

...that I didn't go "all out" and do Black Friday shopping like I was on a mission.

This year, I didn't give a rip. Maybe I'm getting too old for this nonsense?

My daughter and I decided to venture out to get some Christmas lights, and I did notice that several parking lots (Target, Home Depot, Michaels) were not anywhere near as busy as years before.

[Sherman A1]

2. My wife ran to Target

mid morning for one thing and the checker that had been on duty since 5am reported that sales were very slow.