Online Black Friday spending rose this year, in contrast to more robust growth, as bargain-hungry Americans avoided stores and bought cellphones and laptops, according to data from Mastercard and other data providers. , Black Friday spending at U.S. retailers slowed.
Preliminary estimates from payment processing company MasterCard show that sales at brick-and-mortar stores rose just 0.7% from a year earlier, and were down from the same period last year, according to data firm Facteus.
Still, U.S. e-commerce sales rose 14.6% online, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. This metric combines estimates of U.S. retail sales and cash and check payments across the Mastercard payments network.
This estimate is not adjusted for inflation. “If you add more inflation, in-store (spending) will be even lower,” said Jonathan Chin, co-founder and head of data at Facteus.
The company looked at year-over-year debit and credit card spending patterns online and in stores on a seven-day rolling basis.
According to Factes, online sales rose 11.1%, while in-store sales fell 5.4%. Inflation reduces these numbers to 8.5% growth online and 8% growth in physical stores.
Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the Mastercard Economic Research Institute, said that while overall inflation is above 2%, popular holiday items such as consumer electronics, clothing, sporting goods, personal care products and jewelry have declined. pointed out that the price of is falling or that the price is falling. , or only increased slightly over the past year.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season for retailers. Competition for discount-hungry shoppers like Corey Coscioni, 58, is heating up.
Mr. Coccioni searched for bargains Friday, both online and in Chicago-area stores, looking for “gifts for my wife, daughter and myself.”
His stops included Bloomingdale's, Macy's and Anthropologie. “While I wait in line, I shop.''
quiet sale
Ahead of Black Friday, many shoppers visited stores to see what products and prices were on sale. “They've been waiting,” said Mr. Meyer, the Mastercard economist. “But then when Black Friday sales started, there was a huge concentration of spending. Spending actually happened online, where you have the most power and choice as a consumer.”
Department store chains like Macy's and Kohl's, as well as major retailers like Target, are likely to see weak sales this season, with only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Sales at Best Buy and Target were relatively flat on Friday compared to the same period last year, according to Facteus.
E-commerce giants such as Amazon.com and Walmart, which operates 4,700 stores in the U.S., could have an advantage as U.S. shoppers continue to buy online from their phones, laptops, desktops and other devices. has invested heavily in store-to-home delivery for online shoppers.
E-commerce retailers such as Shein, PDD's Temu and Beijing-based ByteDance's social media platform TikTok's TikTok Shop also posted strong year-over-year sales growth in the seven days ending Friday, according to Facteus. It is said that
Overall spending on Friday increased 3.4% from a year earlier, according to Mastercard Spending Pulse (which does not include auto sales and is not adjusted for inflation).
According to advance forecasts, in-store and online spending from November 1 to December 24 is expected to increase 3.2% year over year.
Americans spent about $10.8 billion online on Friday, an increase of 10.2% from a year ago, according to a tally released by Adobe on Saturday.
Cosmetics, Bluetooth speakers, and espresso machines were the top-selling products. Adobe tracks devices that use its software to facilitate more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.
Separately, Salesforce, a cloud-based software company that tracks various spending categories, said U.S. online sales rose 7% to $17.5 billion on Friday.
According to Salesforce, which analyzed the activity of more than 1.5 billion shoppers around the world, shoppers are buying more home appliances and furniture online.
