Consumer Attitudes & Behavior

RESTON, Va. — Retailers who promoted their online presence as a way to avoid the crowds this past weekend were rewarded for their efforts with record sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Target was among those retailers whose decision to open at midnight on Black Friday paid off handsomely this past weekend as record numbers of shoppers visited stores and set new sales records.

Armonk, N.Y. -- U.S. shoppers took advantage of early sales this holiday driving a 39.3% increase in online Thanksgiving day spending while setting the stage for 24.3% online growth on Black Friday compared with the same period last year, according to the fourth annual IBM Coremetrics Black Friday Benchmark study, which tracks more than a million transactions a day, analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide.

All those flat screens televisions sticking out of shopping carts in the aisles of Target stores early Friday morning were no optical illusion.

New York City -- E-commerce spending jumped 26% on Black Friday, according to comscore.

Black Friday web sales totaled $816 million, up from $648 million last year, comScore reported.

“With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman, comScore.

The combination of earlier than ever opening hours, favorable weather and deal conscious consumers receptive to heightened promotional activity produced record sales over Thanksgiving weekend.

The National Retail Federation said an estimated 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Thanksgiving weekend, compared with 212 million last year, and spent an average of $398 per person, compared with $365 last year. Those findings are based on an NRF survey of 3,826 shoppers conducted over the weekend by BIGresearch.

Reston, Va. -- For the first 20 days of November, comScore reported that online spending rose 14% to $9.7 billion. The company forecast that online sales for the full November through December period would increase 15% to a total of $37.6 billion.

New York City -- Heading into the holiday season it was widely expected that online sales would enjoy another year of double-digit growth, and now new data from the online measurement firm comScore confirms those earlier expectations.