#BlackFriday Musings (And More)

12/02/13 05:17PM EST

Shoppers' Black Friday Weekend Spending Falls 3% (Wall Street Journal)

#BlackFriday Musings (And More) - blackfriday

  • "Total spending from Thursday through Sunday fell 3% from a year earlier to $57.4 billion, with shoppers spending an average $407.02, down 4% from $423.55 a year earlier, according to the National Retail Federation."
  • "The retail trade group said the number of people who went shopping over the four-day weekend that kicked off with Thanksgiving rose slightly to 141 million, up from 139 million last year."
  • "As retailers offered some of their biggest promotions a day earlier, store traffic on Thanksgiving Day jumped 27% to 45 million shoppers. As a result, traffic on Black Friday rose just 3.4% to 92 million shoppers."
  • "Online shopping continued its steady rise over the Black Friday weekend, accounting for 42% of sales racked up over the four-day period, up from 40% last year and 26% in 2006, the trade group said."

Takeaway:  The problem here? Retailers are in a massive fight for Black Friday market share -- instead of 4Q profitability. The fact that sales were up over 2% on Friday when every sell-side analyst was out there declaring victory based on their one mall visit (out of 1,100) is laughable. The reality is that the retailers drove traffic by offering ridiculous deals that in effect borrowed from full price sales that would have happened later in the month. Will these guys ever learn? Doubtful.

 

Online Thanksgiving sales top $1 billion for the first time (MarketWatch)

#BlackFriday Musings (And More) - compx

  • "Retailers’ extra push for online Thanksgiving sales this year...have managed to send online sales on Turkey Day to a record…"
  • "For the first time ever, Thanksgiving itself generated $1.06 billion in online sales, an 18% increase from last year, and the first time the day topped $1 billion online. That’s according to Adobe, which says nine out of the top 10 U.S. retailers are its clients and that more than 70% of online spending at the top 500 U.S. retailers goes through its Adobe Marketing Cloud system."
  • "Adobe’s data showed a record 20.9% of online spending was made through mobile devices, with $152 million spent via tablets and $70 million via smartphones. Apple Inc.’s iPad alone accounted for $130 million of online sales, it said."

Takeaway: Not a surprise whatsoever. Though 18% growth is big, it's not huge when talking about online. We are going to see a step up in online sales with six fewer days people can spend in the physical stores. Bullish for AMZN.

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