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The five-day shopping period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday delivered promising results for retailers, particularly in e-commerce. U.S. online sales reached 41-billion-dollars. The National Retail Federation (NRF) highlighted a higher-than-expected 197 million shoppers, surpassing initial forecasts by over 13.6 million. LSU Associate Professor of Marketing Dan Rice says the number of shoppers was lower from last year…
“What was kind of interesting is that they found that there was a bit of a drop in the total number of shoppers. It went from about 200 million just over last year to about 197 million this year.”
Rice says online shopping saw significant growth, with Cyber Monday sales hitting 13-billion dollars, up 7-percent year-over-year, and mobile purchases comprising 57-percent of those sales, reflecting a steady shift toward mobile commerce.
“You may have somebody go to a store to pick up their online order, but they actually ordered it on their mobile phone while they were doing another errand.”
However, in-store traffic declined by 2-percent compared to last year, though it outperformed average year-to-date figures. Rice says in-store retailers are making changes to keep up with online shopping trends…
“There’s still a place for in-line shopping. I mean one of the things you can do if offer sales a little bit earlier which a lot of store have started doing. They now have Black November instead of Black Friday.”
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