Consumers flocked to malls and discount retailers Thanksgiving weekend, pushing overall sales up 22 percent over last year’s holiday weekend, according to figures released by the National Retail Federation (NRF).
But after the initial rush of the day known as “Black Friday,” the holiday shopping spilled onto desktops last week.
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Last Monday, which Nielson//NetRatings said attracted more than 27.7 million consumers, has become one of the busiest shopping days of the year for online retailers. It’s even received its own distinction – “Cyber Monday.”
Groups monitoring online retail stores reported double-digit increases in traffic and sales over last year’s figures for the day.
Traffic to North American online retailer sites jumped 20 percent from the previous Monday and nearly 50 percent from the average-day totals in October, according to Akamai, a seller of online content and business processes.
ComScore Networks, a company that watches consumer behavior and attitudes both online and off, said that sales rose 26 percent on the Monday after Thanksgiving, jumping from $386 million in 2004 to $485 million this year.
The day received the title of Cyber Monday several years ago, after groups that chart online sales noticed large spikes in Web traffic on the Monday after Thanksgiving, said Edward M. Mazze, dean of the University of Rhode Island College of Business.
Online shopping has continued to grow in recent years, particularly among people between the ages of 18 and 55, Mazze said. He expects the trend of online holiday shopping to continue expanding.
“It could become cyber Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” he said.
So has Cyber Monday become a continuation of the holiday weekend, turning Thanksgiving into a five-day shopping spree?
“I don’t think that’s what the intent is,” Mazze said. “But I believe there are people that will read into that … and go into work to continue shopping from Friday.”
Traditional shopping fared well as well, according to the Retail Federation. Shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend jumped $5 billion to $22.8 billion nationwide, the federation said.
Reports showed that discount retailers such as Wal-Mart posted better numbers than traditional malls, which was likely the result of “deep discounting and heavy promotional activities,” Mazze said.
Companies used “loss leaders,” items such as extremely cheap laptops, to lure customers into stores, hoping to keep them shopping for other items, he said.
Paul DeRoche, executive director of the Rhode Island Retail Federation, said that while reports showed discount retailers and big-box stores leading the results nationally, he believed that malls in the state did better than malls across America.
Early reports last week showed that retailers with stores in malls had a 0.5-percent increase in sales this year, ShopperTrak RCT reported.
But locally, largely because of the size of the state, DeRoche said the malls had full parking lots.
With the first official weekend of holiday shopping behind retailers, DeRoche said that he anticipates strong sales, with a jump of 5 percent over last year.
Electronic items such as iPods, plasma televisions and digital cameras are getting people into the stores, he said.
Additionally, consumer confidence is up, he said, and recent drops in energy and utilities costs have given people more disposable cash.
But while DeRoche said the heavy traffic at malls and discount retailers should spill over into other shopping areas, Mazze said that he is worried about the smaller retailers.
Specialty stores – which he described as smaller boutique shops – may not have the same economic windfall that many of the larger chains will, he said.
Stores in Westerly, Wakefield and Wickford may have to band together for promotional and advertising campaigns, he said, if they want to stay afloat.
“If they can’t do better than last year, then a number of them will disappear,” Mazze said. “Their sales will not justify their … being in existence.”
With reports from Bloomberg News.
