Data & Analytics

By Ike Boruchow, analyst, Sterne Agee, New York

This year, Black Friday gave us a taste of what to expect for the remainder of the holiday selling season: intense competition, deep discounts, and choppy mall traffic. Earlier store openings drove heavy traffic, which dissipated and then bounced through the day.

New York -- Overall online sales from Thanksgiving through Sunday were up 14.5% in 2013 over the same period last year, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. Mobile traffic accounted for 40.9% of all online traffic, up more than 35% percent compared to the same period last year. Mobile sales remained strong, reaching 23.2% of all online sales, up 43.7% year-over-year.

In other findings:

Chicago -- Shoppers visited more stores and spent more money across the days of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday (Nov. 28 and 29) than they did last year, according to ShopperTrak.

When compared to Thanksgiving and Black Friday last year, brick-and-mortar shopper traffic increased 2.8%, to more than 1.07 billion store visits. Retail sales also increased by 2.3%, as shoppers spent an estimated total of $12.3 billion across the two days.

West Palm Beach, Fla. -- U.S. online retail sales will reach $508 billion by 2020, representing a market share of nearly 14% (or 17%, if food retailing is excluded), compared to expected online sales of $260 billion in 2013. According to a new report from FTI Consulting, this represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 11% from 2012 through 2020.

Boston – The top five brand experience trends for 2014 include retail relevancy and “small data,” according to brand experience agency Jack Morton. The company predicts the following five trends will prove dominant in brand experience during the upcoming year.

New York - Companies seeking to get closer to their customers simply need to remember and acknowledge their birthdays. A new online survey conducted by analytics and marketing technology provider Fulcrum finds that nearly three-out-of-four (74%) consumers who received birthday messages from a company they do business with thought more positively of the company afterward.

Guangzhou, China -- Vipshop Holdings Limited, a Chinese online discount retailer for brands, has appointed Lily Fan as the company's VP of human resources, effective Dec. 2.

Bitcoin, the nearly anonymous, peer-to-peer online currency, has been getting attention lately. The attention has not been necessarily positive, as bitcoin was the preferred currency of the recently closed down Silk Road “darknet” site that served as a virtual global marketplace for narcotics and other illegal goods.

Walgreens has opened the nation’s first net zero energy retail store, in Evanston, Ill. (A net zero building produces energy equal to or greater than it consumes.)

The new Walgreens features two wind turbines, nearly 850 solar panels and a geothermal heating and cooling system burrowed 550 ft. into the ground. Combined, the store’s energy-saving technologies and systems are expected to reduce its electricity consumption to 200,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which is about half of an average Chicago-area Walgreens’ store energy footprint.

Tablets, headphones and gaming hardware were the most frequently purchased consumer electronics products during a weekend which saw more than half of CE sales occur online.

The Consumer Electronics Association said 55% of U.S. adults who bought consumer electronics on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday did so online, well ahead of the 45% who did so in 2012.