CloudCommerce, Inc., a global provider of cloud-driven e-commerce and mobile commerce solutions, is chiming in on a recently released industry survey reporting that for the first time ever, more Americans shopped online than at brick-and-mortar stores over Black Friday weekend.
According to the National Retail Federations’ Thanksgiving Weekend Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, roughly 103 million Americans shopped online over the Thanksgiving-Black Friday weekend, compared to the 102 million who visited physical stores.
“This year, many stores discarded traditional Black Friday plans, anticipating that consumers were going digital, and that major sellers, such as Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and Target, all posed a significant threat,” the CloudCommerce team says. “The major sellers rolled out Black Friday deals early on Thursday morning, hours before shoppers could access the same discounts in physical retail stores. And on Sunday, many retailers, including Walmart and J.C. Penney were offering their Cyber Monday deals, effectively turning the event into Cyber Sunday.”
RetailNext estimated that in-store brick-and-mortar sales across the industry actually fell 1.5% on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but retailers with strong e-commerce operations made up for it with online sales. This marks the first time in history that e-commerce shopping has outpaced brick-and-mortar purchases during the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
Adobe reported that e-commerce sales rose 19% between Thanksgiving and Saturday to hit $6.1 billion, with mobile commerce setting a new record, taking a 34 percent share of overall online sales.
“This is truly a seminal event in American culture,” said CloudCommerce CEO Andrew Van Noy. “E-commerce has now fully shifted to become the primary preference for shoppers. We have seen this coming for a long time, and the numbers we see today further validate our growth-by-acquisition business plan here at CloudCommerce.”
