ARLINGTON, Va – Were you one of the millions of ‘Black Friday” shoppers? If you were, chances are you now have new electronics. Record sales on Black Friday are demonstrating the growing consumer demand for sale prices on their favourite gadgets.
Adobe Digital Index measured dual online sales records for Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which saw 400 million visits during the two-day period. The increase in Thanksgiving online sales surpassed last year, breaking the billion-dollar mark at $1.06 billion, with actual spending up 18%. No laggard, Black Friday reached a record of its own, with actual spending jumping to nearly $2 billion ($1.93 billion)—up more than 30% YOY.
Adobe reports, “Last year, sales started picking up online at 9 a.m. ET on Black Friday. This year things began ramping up three hours earlier as a result of increased in-store mobile shopping and new strategies that staged releases of ‘door-buster’ promotions throughout the day. With in-store shopping happening early in the day on Thanksgiving, consumers appeared to head home earlier and continue shopping online. Online shopping peaked between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. ET on Black Friday, when retailers pulled in $150 million in a single hour”.
The Consumer Electronics Association is reporting “Over half of U.S. adults who shopped through Friday, November 29 and bought consumer electronics, did so online, a 10 percentage point increase over last year and a new record.
These are the interim results from the Consumer Electronics Association’s (CEA)® annual Black Friday Survey.
Among the 35 percent that bought a consumer electronics product through the weekend, tablets (29 percent) have been the most popular electronic device purchased. Headphones (24 percent), video game hardware (21 percent), smartphones (19 percent) and laptop/notebook computers (17 percent) were the next most commonly purchased consumer electronic products during the first two days of the long, holiday weekend.
Almost 39 million U.S. adults shopped on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, an increase of more than 10 million shoppers from last year. The weekend isn’t over yet. Shopping intentions for Cyber Monday are the highest they have ever been in three years with roughly 18 percent of consumers planning to continue the Thanksgiving shopping weekend.
“Consumers appear to have responded to retailers’ strong push to get them in the stores and online early this year,” said Shawn DuBravac, CEA’s chief economist and senior director of research. “The dust is still settling, but early indications point to a weekend of record-breaking online sales and a healthy appetite for key tech products.”
CEA predicts 126 million U.S. adults will have shopped through Monday of the 2013 Thanksgiving weekend. Once again, tech was second only to clothes as the most popular item purchased this weekend, with toys rounding out the top three. Through Friday, 66 percent of those shopping purchased clothing, 35 percent say they bought electronics and 32 percent say they bought toys.
