Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Shoppers spent an average $361.90 on holiday items over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a 16 percent increase over 2018. Most of that money ($257.33, or 71 percent) was spent specifically on gifts, NRF said. Consumers between the ages of 25 and 34 were the biggest spenders, at an average $440.46, followed closely by 35 to 44 year olds, who spent an average $439.72.
The NRF-Prosper data was based on a survey of 6,746 consumers, between Wednesday Nov. 27 and Mon. Dec. 2.
Based on the NRF-Prosper data, top gift purchases over the holiday shopping weekend included:
Black Friday was the busiest day for in-store shopping, with 84.2 million shoppers hitting the aisles, followed by Small Business Saturday (59.9 million), Thanksgiving Day (37.8 million), Sunday (29.2 million) and Cyber Monday (21.8 million).
A majority of consumers shopped both online and at brick-and-mortar stores over the long weekend – 124 million shopped in stores while 142.2 million shopped online – the NRF-Prosper data indicates. And those who shopped both channels, with an average spend of $366.79, tended to outspend mono-channel shoppers.
“The growth in online retail sales is a tide that lifts everybody,” said Prosper Executive Vice President Phil Rist. “When consumers are buying from retailers online but picking up or making returns in-store, it is more difficult to distinguish between the sales retailers make in their stores and the ones they make on their websites.”
NRF defines the year-end holiday shopping season as November 1 through December 31. It forecasts sales for that two-month period will total somewhere between $727.9 billion and $730.7 billion. Average consumer spend for the period is expected to total $1,047.83, representing a 4 percent increase over average spend for the same period last year.
Data released by Adobe Analytics, meanwhile, indicates online shoppers on their way to record spending. As of December 3, the holiday season had generated a record $81.5 billion in online sales. On Cyber Monday, alone, consumers spent $9.4 billion online, representing nearly a 20 percent increase over Cyber Monday 2018, and making it the largest Cyber Monday since the Monday following Thanksgiving became a designated online shopping deal day.
This year’s holiday shopping season is the shortest possible, with just 26 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, six fewer days than in 2018. But that doesn’t seem to be throttling spending plans. Adobe expects consumer online spending to top $140 billion this holiday shopping season, representing 13.1 percent growth over the $126 billion in online sales recorded last year. (Like NRF, Adobe defines the shopping season as the entire moths of November and December.)
Adobe said it expects daily online spending to top $2 billion on at least 13 of the 32 shopping days this year-end holiday shopping season.
It also said it expects online shopping with smartphones will account for almost half (47 percent) of overall U.S. retail holiday sales growth this year. Americans will spend $14 billion more this holiday season using their phones than they did last year, exceeding total spend using desktop devices, Adobe predicted. As of December 2, desktop devices were used for 59 percent of online purchases, compared to 36 percent using smartphones and 5 percent using tablets. 
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