As many Americans bought online as they did in physical stores during the Thanksgiving weekend shopping splurge, the National Retail Federation said Sunday, highlighting a growing trend away from the traditional Black Friday consumer assault, according to AP.
The closely watched survey said that about 151 million people shopped either in stores and/or online over the long weekend in the United States, when many consumers look to take advantage of promotions.
That used to mean queuing up in the bracing cold late Thursday night after Thanksgiving into early Friday morning and - in some cases - literally fighting for the best offers.
But the 2015 figures underline how American consumers are changing to get their holiday shopping fix - nearly 102 million shopped in stores and more than 103 million shopped online this year.
"We recognize the experience is much different than it used to be as just as many people want that unique, exclusive online deal as they do that in-store promotion," NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement.
"It is clear that the age-old holiday tradition of heading out to stores with family and friends is now equally matched in the new tradition of looking online for holiday savings opportunities."
The NRF found that 133.7 million people shopped during the holiday last year.
Accurate comparisons cannot be made between this year and last because the poll by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the NRF used a different methodology than in 2014.
A separate NRF survey found that more than 121 million shoppers, or about 49.5 percent of consumers, plan to shop online on so-called Cyber Monday, which takes place on Nov. 30 this year. That was down slightly from the 126.9 million who planned to participate last year.
The average spending per person over the weekend reached $229.60. The NRF said last year that consumers spent an average $380.95, but again, that was using different methodology. People under the age of 35 were most likely to spend over the weekend.
Meanwhile, U.S. shoppers no longer blow the bulk of their holiday budgets on Black Friday according to AP. It's a major shift that has made it difficult for stores to track and learn from shoppers' spending habits during the traditional start to the busy holiday shopping season.
Take Pia Tracy, who bought some items at Pier 1 home furnishings store over the weekend. But Tracy, who lives in Queens, N.Y., plans to spread out the majority of her $4,000 holiday budget throughout the season.
"Black Friday weekend doesn't matter to me anymore," Tracy said. "There's always some kind of deal in-store or online."
Like Tracy, many U.S. shoppers like to make purchases on their desktops and smartphones nowadays, they insist on getting big discounts whenever they shop, and they don't feel pressured to shop on particular days.
That shift has caused the National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, to overhaul the way it tracks shopper spending and visits during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend something it's been doing for more than a decade. The group said the changes are aimed at getting a fuller picture of shoppers' habits, including their growing affinity for online buying.
The group, which has long been criticized for its estimates of total spending over the extended weekend because they're based on shopper surveys and not actual sales data, said it will no longer track total spending for the weekend. It also said it's asking shoppers different questions, which has led it to report numbers that vary significantly from those it's gotten in previous years.
The moves are significant because retail experts, investors and economists look to the group's Thanksgiving weekend numbers to provide an indication of the mood of consumers heading into the holiday shopping season, a period of historically strong spending.
The data, without year-over-year comparisons, paints an incomplete picture of the behavior and spending of U.S. shoppers over the weekend. But overall, the group sticks by its pre-Black Friday prediction that sales in November and December will rise 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion. That's below last year's 4.1 percent growth.
Year-over-year growth is getting increasingly harder to come by, as the weekend crowds proved. Mall of America, the nation's largest shopping mall, said visits on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, were about even with last year.
"It's no longer the crazy rush when doors open," said Dan Jasper, a Mall of America spokesman Business was brisk but not overwhelming at a Macy's in Kansas City, Missouri at 10 a.m. on Friday as a cold, steady drizzle fell. No lines had more than a few customers.
In Denver early on Black Friday, the crowds were similarly thin. In a strip mall that included Kmart, every store was open, but the only one with a shopper inside was Starbucks.
Kevin Sandoval had never gone shopping on Black Friday, but he was lured by a Sam's Club TV deal $100 off a 55-inch television.
Loading his car in the near-empty parking lot, Sandoval said he was in and out of the store in about 15 minutes. He expected a crowd, but found just a handful of other shoppers. "There was no one here," he said. "This is a hidden gem now, coming out to shop on Black Friday."
