Ready… Set… Shop!
Yes, it’s that time of year again as Black Friday has become a big shopping excursion for consumers. It also seems to get longer. This year, Black Friday sales started weeks earlier and the deals continued on for weeks afterward.
While we might suspect that spending is still leaning towards online shopping, brick-and-mortar stores and malls saw an uptick in visitors and shopping. Foot traffic in top-tier indoor malls jumped almost 300% compared to the visitor traffic during the first three quarters of the year. Consider that Target had 160% more visitors and Best Buy gathered 700% more traffic.
According to Adobe, Cyber Monday also grew at a rate of 9.6% compared to last year, making it the biggest online shopping day, ever. Electronics, smartwatches, TV, and audio equipment were big sellers along with gaming products. Top gifts were clothing and accessories, toys, gift cards, books, video games, and beauty products.
Some additional shopping highlights:
- 200.4 million consumers shopped over the five-day holiday shopping weekend from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
- Black Friday was again the most popular day for in-store shopping at 76.2 million shoppers.
- Black Friday was also the most popular day for online shopping at 90.6 million shoppers
- Shoppers spent $9.8 billion online (an increase of 7.5% from last year)
- Mobile devices accounted for 54% of online sales, exceeding revenue from desktop shopping.
- Cyber Monday was the season’s biggest online shopping day at $12.4 billion.
- Shopper traffic in stores was up 2 – 5% compared to 2022.
- Big categories for in-store shopping were health and beauty, jewelry, apparel, and home stores.
- Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) rose significantly by 42% compared to 2022.
No matter what is happening with the economy, people still like to shop and give gifts.
What did you buy?
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Discuss spending over the Thanksgiving weekend. Show video: https://youtu.be/lDw6EhPgwXU?si=t03H0qw8u9lhhb8c
- Show the NRF shopping charts: https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/thanksgiving-holiday-weekend-sees-record-number-shoppers
- Poll students about their shopping over Thanksgiving Week – Cyber Monday.
- Where did they spend? How much?
- Divide students into teams.
- In teams, have students tally how much they spent, which products were sought after, etc. See which teams are the biggest spenders.
- Have each team design a holiday sales promotion for a company of their choosing.
Source: Kohan, S. (26 November 2023). Black Friday online sales up 7/5% and in-store shopping visits climbed. Forbes; National Retail Federation. (28 November 2023). Thanksgiving holiday weekend sees record number of shoppers; Norfleet, N. (29 November 2023). Shoppers flock to Black Friday deals. Minneapolis Star Tribune.