Thanksgiving weekend saw a record of 197 million shoppers, Black Friday surpassing Cyber Monday in shoppers count. The National Retail Federation (NRF) and Proper Insights and Analytics released a report that 197 million shoppers purchased items from shops and online stores, surpassing the earlier forecast of 183.4 million shoppers.
Matthew Shay, CEO and president of NRF said, “The number of shoppers exceeded the expectations, fairly dramatically with 197 million consumers, who shopped throughout the five-day weekend.” A few years ago, NRF started tracking the number of shoppers and it is the second-highest record number of shoppers, almost similar to last year’s record of 203.4 million.
Holiday Shoppers Surge Over Thanksgiving Weekend
Thanksgiving weekend shopping demonstrates the purchasing capacity of shoppers and the economic growth of a country. Shay said, “Thanksgiving is a very important holiday weekend, it represents the emotional bond of the shoppers. It is now more important to them as compared to the pre-pandemic era.”
197 million shoppers represent 75% youth population of the US and more than 14 million shoppers than anticipated by NRF. Since 2020, 21 million more shoppers have turned out on average during Thanksgiving weekend as compared to pre-pandemic years like 2017, 2018, and 2019.
The inflation in the US has affected many industries as it has changed the purchasing patterns of customers and cost-conscious shopping is a new trend. However, it didn’t affect the shoppers during a holiday weekend. Matthew Shay said, “We expect a very healthy holiday season, consumers are earning and retailers are also happy with the work.”
US Retail Sales Soar Over Thanksgiving Weekend
As per the NRF report, each day of the weekend had record-breaking sales. The second-highest in-store shopping record was created on Saturday, which is also called Small Business Saturday. As per the data, 61.1 million consumers went to stores on post-Thanksgiving Saturday.
The data has proved the assumption of more customers shopping online is not true. Millions of shoppers went to stores during the Thanksgiving weekend. According to NRF reports major shopping destinations of the weekend were:
- Department Stores – 42%
- Online stores – 42%
- Grocery stores and supermarkets – 37%
- Clothing and Accessories Stores – 37%
- Discount Stores -30%
Black Friday Had Record Number of Shoppers
The NRF report revealed that Black Friday was the most favorite day of the Thanksgiving weekend. While 81.7 million customers went for in-store shopping, a total of 87.3 million customers opted for online shopping, slightly less than last year’s counts.
Cyber Monday remains the second most popular day for online shopping with a count of 64.4 million shoppers.
This year has a shorter duration between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, reducing the shopping days for customers. Many business owners believed that there would be less number of shoppers because of the short duration. However, it doesn’t seem to be true as people have started early shopping, starting from a week before the Thanksgiving weekend.
