Black Friday data shows that foot traffic in stores rose 3.5 percent over Black Friday 2011 while sales saw a 1.8 percent decline from Black Friday 2011. Why weren't sales up on this day as well? According to business.time.com, Thanksgiving-night sales and Internet deals probably stole quite a few sales from Friday.
The take-away from the data, the article reported, is that Black Friday success for brick-and-mortars is far from declining — rather that the Black Friday monster has grown so large that it cannot be contained to one day.
Black Friday began Thanksgiving morning, when retailers flooded e-mail subscribers with special online shopping offers. It stretched on to Thanksgiving night, when stores opened their doors for Black Friday door busters several hours before Friday arrived, the article reported.
Just as Black Friday has evolved into a gigantic multiday, multichannel shopping affair, the concept of shopping for holiday gifts during the days after Thanksgiving has morphed into a time for all sorts of shopping, for gifts and nongifts alike. In an NRF survey, 80 percent of consumers said they'd taken advantage of retailer nongift promotions over the weekend. Translation: all those sweaters, TVs, video games and home appliances purchased aren't necessarily going to wind up under Christmas trees.
Read more about multichannel retailing.
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