The pandemic and online shopping have fundamentally changed Black Friday. Long gone are the days when people waited all night for whatever deals Best Buy or Walmart were offering at 4 a.m.
These days, more than half of consumers do most of their holiday shopping online, according to the survey firm Numerator. And tales of stampedes on Thanksgiving or Black Friday are long gone.
Yet consumers have not fully abandoned stores and, in fact, appear to be more willing to visit traditional brick-and-mortar retailers these days.
According to the National Retail Federation, or NRF, 197 million people went shopping last weekend, including brick-and-mortar stores and online sites. That was more than the group expected, given that Thanksgiving came late this year and a lot of people started their shopping beforehand.
That was the second highest number ever, after the more than 200 million shoppers last year.
We’re more intrigued by this data, however: A total of 126 million consumers shopped in store last weekend, up from 121.4 million in 2023.
Meanwhile, 124.3 million people shopped online over the weekend, down from 134.2 million in 2023.
In other words, consumers at least for one weekend were more likely to shop inside stores than they were to shop online.
Holiday shopping season isn’t quite as important for restaurants as it is for traditional retailers, many of which count on the last couple of months of the year for a large portion of their sales and profits.
But a lot of chain restaurants rely on foot traffic for their sales, and the holiday shopping season traditionally gets people out doing things such as shopping.
As such, a certain subset of chains such as coffee shops or mall-based brands such as Auntie Anne’s or any selection of MTY or Fat Brands-owned concepts, tend to do better when more people are out shopping. So, too, do casual-dining chains or whatever fast-casual brands operate near shopping areas.
Going into and coming out of the pandemic, many of us in the media were writing off the traditional shopping mall as online shopping took hold. And the Numerator data certainly demonstrates just how important the Internet has become for Americans’ shopping habits. While 52% of consumers say they do most of their shopping online, only 18% do most of their shopping in-person.
Yet shopping malls have adapted to that reality and consumers haven’t fully abandoned brick-and-mortar sites. Mall and retail-dependent concepts have done just fine as a result. Many have rebounded quite well from the pandemic.
All that said, this year the shopping season remains tinged with consumer concern about inflation.
NRF is forecasting a typical holiday shopping season in 2024, with spending expected to grow between 2.5% and 3.5%, which means consumers could spend as much as $989 billion over this period.
At the same time, however, a large portion of consumers are expected to change their spending as a result of high prices.
According to Numerator, more than half of consumers are seeking out promotions or coupons and 42% are buying fewer gifts in response to inflation. Sound familiar? It all suggests a consumer that remains bifurcated, which means some retailers will do just fine while others will struggle as their shoppers cut back.
So while consumers may be more willing now to visit stores this holiday season than they were a year ago, it doesn’t mean they’re coming with their wallets open.