There have been several estimates of Black Friday sales both specific and anecdotal. The National Retail Federal added its figures for what many believe is the most critical shopping day of the holiday season.
According to a National Retail Federation survey conducted over the weekend by BIGresearch, more shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend – and spent more – than a year ago. According to the survey, 212 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and a Sunday estimate), up from 195 million last year. People also spent more, with the average shopper this weekend spending $365.34, up from last year’s $343.31. Total spending reached an estimated $45.0 billion The amount spent per shopper was up 6% which would put the figure ahead of most estimates.
The NRF survey says both department stores (52.0% this year vs. 49.4% last year) and clothing stores (24.4% vs. 22.9%) saw healthy increases in traffic, while the percentage of people who shopped at discounters declined 7.2 percent, from 43.2 percent last year to 40.3 percent this year. As retailers leverage their websites to offer Black Friday prices to shoppers who don’t want to fight crowds, the percentage of people who shopped online this weekend rose a healthy 15.2 percent, from 28.5 percent last year to 33.6 percent this year – a strong sign heading into Cyber Monday.
The NRF data on discount retailers runs counter to what many experts expected. Shoppers in search of bargains usually look for them at deep discount stores. And, the economy is still weak enough that traffic to these establishments should have prospered.
ShopperTrak, another research firm, estimate of Black Friday sales revenue is that they only rose .3%. ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin said “Retailers were very conscious of driving traffic early in November and in doing so some might have thinned Black Friday spending a bit. The reality is we have a deal driven consumer in 2010 and that consumer responded to some of the earliest deep discounts we’ve even seen for the holidays.
New data from online research firm comScore contradicts the NRF data for internet sales. Comscore claims that “Black Friday (November 26) saw $648 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2010 and representing a 9 percent increase versus Black Friday 2009.” A competing study, the Coremetrics third annual Black Friday Benchmark Report says, “Online sales were up a healthy 15.9 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $170.19 to $190.80  for an increase of 12.1 percent.”
The NRF data, ShopperTrak, Coremetrics, and Comscore information confirms one thing for certain. No organization or research firm has accurate figures for how the Black Friday weekend performed for retailers. The confusion also means that analysts cannot tell whether discounts available before Black Friday stole sales from the critical shopping day and whether total sales through November, driven by deep discounts, will take sales from the week before Christmas when bargain hunters turn to stores for last-minute markdowns.
No one, not even the best research firms, can be certain what happened on Black Friday, and the data show it
Douglas A. McIntyre
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