Retailers Thankful for Thanksgiving

(IDEX Online News) – It may herald the start of the season of goodwill, but with 33 million American shoppers looking to begin their holiday shopping on Thanksgiving itself, it seems that the real thanks this year is going to be heard from retailers.

According to a preliminary Thanksgiving weekend shopping survey from the National Retail Federation (NRF), up to 140 million people plan to or will shop over the Thanksgiving weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday), which marks a slight decrease from the 147 million who planned to do so last year.

“Though many people have already started to check off items from their holiday shopping lists, we fully expect to see many more come out on Thanksgiving Day and throughout the weekend to take in the festive sights and sounds – and to take advantage of unbeatable deals,” said NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay. “

According to the survey, Black Friday (November 29) will be the biggest day of the weekend: 69.1 percent plan to shop on Black Friday, or approximately 97 million shoppers. Additionally 43.8 percent will shop on Saturday (61 million) and 24.2 percent will shop on Sunday (34 million). 

A number of retailers are not taking their chances and waiting for the Thanksgiving weekend. According to Shop.org’s eHoliday survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, half of retailers surveyed (51.1 percent) are planning to start their Thanksgiving weekend online promotions at least five days before the big weekend.  Recognizing the growing trend among consumers to shop online on Thanksgiving Day, 53.5 percent say they will offer promotions specifically for that day.

While many shoppers are turning to the Internet for their shopping, offline promotions are still important. Nearly half of consumers (49.1 percent) said they will be looking at newspapers for information about upcoming sales events. This is followed by retailers’ digital news: 33.5 percent of people will look for special emails from retailers, 27 percent will follow retailers’ websites and 21.9 percent will scour coupon websites for deals.