Black Friday weekend sees a record 247M shoppers and $59.1B in sales — almost half online

Almost 250 million Americans visited stores on Black Friday weekend, spending an average of $423 each for total holiday sales of almost $60 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.

That’s a new record, the NRF said, and 28 percent of those weekend shoppers were at stores by midnight on Black Friday.

The numbers are up from last year’s figures (226 million people spending $398 each last year), and includes 89 million shoppers on Black Friday alone. They also may blow earlier predictions of $32 billion in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the water, although Monday sales, of course, are not yet included in these figures.

Close to half the amount spent — 40.7 percent, or $170.42 — was spent online. That’s also up from 37.8 percent last year. Half of all Black Friday shoppers did at least some shopping online.

“There’s no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers’ aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” said Pam Goodfellow, BigInsight’s consumer insights director. BigInsight conducted the poll of 4005 consumers, on which the numbers are based, for the NRF.

It may indeed be better to give than to receive, but not everyone was shopping for Christmas gifts.

In fact, 80 percent of shoppers bought non-gift items, with 60 percent buying clothes and accessories. Popular gifts included toys, media, electronics, and jewelry.

Unfortunately, when there are great deals and lots of people, some have trouble keeping it classy:

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc