Record crowds to shop during Thanksgiving weekend; most popular day to shop is …

Deals are expected to bring out a record number of shoppers over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

An estimated 166.3 million people are planning to shop from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday this year, according to the annual survey by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. The total is the highest estimate since NRF began tracking the data in 2017 and is almost 8 million more people than last year.

According to the survey, 69% of holiday shoppers plan to shop during Thanksgiving weekend this year. Black Friday continues to be the most popular day to shop, with 69% (114.9 million) planning to shop then, followed by 38% (63.9 million) on Cyber Monday. Among the 114.9 million Black Friday shoppers, 67% say they expect to head to stores, up from 64% in 2021.

The top reasons consumers plan to shop are because the deals are too good to pass up (59%), because of tradition (27%) or because it is something to do (22%) over the holiday.

Similar to 2020 and 2021, this year, 60% of holiday shoppers had started browsing and buying for the season as of early November. This consumer trend of earlier shopping was accelerated by the pandemic. In 2019, 56% of holiday shoppers had started their shopping around this time.

“While consumers continue to save the bulk of their holiday shopping for later in November and December, some of that spending has shifted into October,” stated Phil Rist, executive VP of strategy, Prosper. “This year, 18% of holiday shoppers have completed at least half of their holiday shopping. While this is on par with last year, it is up from only 11% a decade ago.”

Online search (43%) remains the most popular source of gift inspiration, followed by friends and family (35%) and within a retail store (31%). The top five gift categories consumers plan to give are clothing (55%), followed by gift cards at 45%, toys at 37%, books/music/movies/video games at 33% and food/candy at 31%.

Gift cards remain a favorite gift item, with total spending expected to reach $28.6 billion, compared with $28.1 billion in 2021. Similar to last year, holiday shoppers plan to purchase between three to four gift cards and spend an average of $51.47 per card ($165.87 per person).

Consumers are most likely to purchase a gift card for a restaurant (27%), department store (26%) or bank-issued gift card (25%). Another 10% plan to purchase a food delivery service gift card such as DoorDash or Uber Eats. 

For those buying for children, the top five toys for boys this year are Lego, Hot Wheels, cars/trucks, PlayStation and video games. For girls, the top toys are Barbie, doll, L.O.L. dolls, Lego and makeup.

NRF forecast earlier this month that holiday sales during November and December will grow between 6% and 8% over 2021 to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion.

Last year’s holiday sales grew 13.5% over 2020 and totaled $889.3 billion, shattering previous records. Holiday retail sales have averaged an increase of 4.9% over the past 10 years, with pandemic spending in recent years accounting for considerable gains.