Poll: Readers no longer feeling Black Friday

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Shopping in stores on Black Friday is on the decline and InMaricopa readers say they are doing less of it than ever before. [CorrectSuccess.com]

The Christmas shopping season is in full swing, and many of us already have done much of our shopping. But there also are those of us who have not.

That got us thinking, with the rise of online shopping, “Is Black Friday still a thing?”

According to our reader poll, it decidedly is not.

The majority of our 268 voters, 53.7%, said, “No, now that you can buy just about anything online, who needs it?”

More than one in three, 36.2%, said, “Black Friday was never a big thing for me, so I’m good.”

There were some holdouts for the old ways of fighting crowds the day after Thanksgiving, as 10.1% of respondents said, “Yes, who wouldn’t want to haul out of bed in total darkness before the crack of dawn, still under the influence of turkey, when you could have slept in, to fight crowds to get a discount on stuff you don’t really need?”

Whether shopping in person on Black Friday is still a thing or not, consumers have undoubtedly embraced online shopping. American shoppers spent a record $9.1 billion online shopping during Black Friday this year, according to Adobe, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites.

Online sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 2.3% over 2021, and electronics were a major contributor, as online sales surged 221% over an average day in October, Adobe said. Toys were another popular category for shoppers, up 285% over the norm. Exercise equipment was up 218%.

Black Friday shoppers also broke a record for orders from their mobile phones, with 48% of online sales coming from smartphones, an increase from 44% last year.

Typically, $2 billion to $3 billion is spent by shoppers online daily, according to Adobe.

In-store spending on Black Friday dropped 28.3% compared with 2019 levels, the last year prior to COVID restrictions being in place. Americans shifted more of their spending online and kicked off their shopping earlier, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions.

However, in-store traffic was up 47.5% compared with 2021 levels, Sensormatic said.