Bill Park, a partner at Deloitte & Touche LP, said that online sales are complementary shopping in the store over the weekend, and for customers and retailers the two platforms are starting to run together. This is happening more and more as retailers such as Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. sell both online and through stores, making winning the transaction more important than where it occurs, retail consultants and analysts said. Online sales increased by more than 23 percent and exceeded $ 6 billion on
Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at 80 of the top 100 US retailers. Thanksgiving grew 28 percent to $ 3.7 billion on Thanksgiving. Preliminary data from the retail company AnalyticsNext showed that net sales in physical stores fell 4 to 7 percent during the two days, while traffic fell by 5 to 9 percent, continuing the trend of recent years. There were no data available for actual expenses in stores. In 2017, brick sales declined by 8.9 percent in the year-on-year weekend and customer traffic by 4.4 percent. In 2016, store sales fell by 4.2 percent and traffic fell by 4.4 percent, according to RetailNext. The decline in retail turnover is slightly higher than in recent years, although it is still within expectations, said spokesperson Ray Hartjen of RetailNext.
Data from the retail research firm ShopperTrak also showed that visits to stores fell 1% during Thanksgiving and
Black Friday compared to the same days in 2017. Brian Field, senior director of advisory services at ShopperTrak, said that online sales have affected shopkeepers' traffic over the years, "but what we've noticed is that the decline is beginning to level off ... All in all it consistent with where it was over the last few years.” In 2017, visits to physical stores on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were 1.6 percent lower, according to the company.
"This decline feels pretty good to me, I think retail is going through a good season," Field said.
Retail consultants have said that spending patterns on weekends are not as indicative for the entire season, as they tend to expand purchases in November and December a few years ago.
The National Retail Federation predicts that retail sales in the United States will increase from 4.3 to 4.8 percent in November and December between 2017 and 2015, from $ 717.45 to $ 720.89 billion. This is comparable to an average annual increase of 3.9 percent in the last five years.
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