Black Friday Weekend Traffic up 4.8%, Online Sales up 17%

Tallying the weekend figures, U.S. holiday sales look generally positive, although it is not clear yet how well jewelry in particular fared. More than 147 million shoppers in the U.S. hit the stores on Black Friday weekend, up 4.8 percent from last year.

High expectations from online sales, forecasted to be over $700 million on Cyber Monday alone

But while sales rose, the average expenditure per purchase decreased. On the four days of Thursday-Sunday (November 22-25) consumers spent an average of $347.44, a 3.5 percent decrease from last year. Retailers made up for the lower average expenditure with increased traffic, the National Retail Federation's 2007 Black Friday Weekend Survey found.

"While last year showed a greater emphasis on high-definition televisions, this year consumers were focused on lower priced doorbusters like digital photo frames, laptops and cashmere sweaters," said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin.

The most popular items purchased were clothing or clothing accessories (46.8 percent) as well as books, CDs, DVDs, videos or video games (41.7 percent). Other purchases this weekend included consumer electronics (35.7 percent), toys (28.2 percent) and gift cards (21.0 percent). Jewelry sales did not appear in the top selling categories.

With greater emphasis on door-buster specials in the consumer electronics category, men outspent women $393.63 to $303.95.

"Knowing that consumers would be challenged by the current economic environment, retailers hoped that higher traffic would offset lower individual spending, which it did," said Phil Rist, vice president of Strategy for BIGresearch. "With consumers expecting retailers to be more promotional on Cyber Monday, the holiday season is off to a good start."

This expectation got backing form comScore, which found that in the first 23 days of the November-December holiday season, more than $9.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 17 percent gain over last year.

Online retail spending was strong on both Thanksgiving Day (up 29 percent to $272 million) and Black Friday (up 22 percent to $531 million), outpacing the season-to-date growth rate.

ComScore predicts Cyber Monday sales will surpass $700 million, making it the heaviest online spending day on record.

As of Sunday, November 26, the average American had completed 36.4 percent of their holiday shopping, the NRF reports, showing virtually no change from last year. Only one in 12 consumers (8.2 percent) had reportedly finished their holiday shopping.