Analysis shows a ‘modest’ increase in Black Friday foot traffic and store sales, while online sales surge year over year, according to new data from the NRF, Mastercard SpendingPulse and Placer.ai.
On Black Friday 2024, U.S. retail sales increased 3.4% year over year, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. Broken out by channel, however, and the disparity between online sales growth and in-store sales growth is clear: online retail sales increased 14.6% year over year, while in-store sales increased 0.7% compared with Black Friday 2023.
The payment network measures in-store and online retail sales, representing all payment types and excludes automotive sales.
The National Retail Federation also found that more consumers shopped online than in stores on most days thought the Thanksgiving weekend, according to its annual survey of 3,055 adult consumers conducted Nov. 27-Dec. 1 with Prosper Insights & Analytics. On Black Friday, 81.7 million consumers shopped in stores, which is fewer shoppers than online, where 87.3 million consumers shopped on Black Friday.
In fact, more consumers shopped online than in stores on every day throughout the five-days Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, except for Saturday, according to NRF’s data. In total for the five-day weekend, 197 million consumers shopped, which includes 126.0 million consumers shopping in-store and 124.3 million consumers shopping online. This is slightly less than the 2023 Thanksgiving weekend, when 200.4 million consumers shopped over the five days either online or in store.
Black Friday stretches all weekend long
From Friday through Sunday, retail sales increased 2.7% year over year, which includes a 12.2% year-over-year increase for online retail sales, according to MasterCard’s data.
“Black Friday has become more than just one day, but instead a window of time for shoppers to find value,” according to MasterCard.
Foot traffic analysis vendor Placer.ai’s data shows an elongated peak shopping weekend as well.
Visits to U.S. retailers on Black Friday 2024 increased 0.9% compared with Black Friday 2023, store visits increased 2.0% year over year on Saturday and visits increase 6.2% on Sunday, according to Placer.ai’s data which is based on anonymized smartphone tracking of 10s of millions of U.S. shoppers. Overall, foot traffic to retail stores increased 40.4% compared with an average Friday in 2024, according to Placer.ai’s data.
This spreading out of shopping over the weekend likely happened for several reasons, such as limited-time deals were not enticing enough to shoppers or consumers previewing deals online before heading into the store when it was more convenient for them, said Elizabeth Lafontaine, director of research at Placer.ai.
“With Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals taking place in-store and online for most retailers, consumers have an elongated window to shop,” Lafontaine said.
Physical retail still alive, even at the mall
The nearly 1% year-over-year increase in foot traffic demonstrates consumers are still interested in shopping in person, Lafontaine said. Although, she notes that increases varied by store type, such as off-price, mass merchants, department stores and beauty retailers having the largest foot-traffic increases.
“Close to 1% growth overall signals that consumers were interested in shopping physical retail, but were conscious to curate what categories of retailers or promotions suited their needs this year,” she said.
Data from mall real estate owner Simon finds even stronger foot-traffic increases, including a 5.9% year-over-year traffic increase on Black Friday, a 6.3% increase on Saturday and 8.2% increase on Sunday.
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