Nearly 180 million Americans shopped during the five-day holiday shopping period from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, according to the annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
In total, 179.8 million unique shoppers made in-store and online purchases during the holiday weekend, exceeding NRF’s initial expectations by more than 21 million. The figure compares with 186.4 million shoppers in 2020 and is in line with the average of the last four years.
The number of people who shopped in stores increased this year. Retailers saw an increase in foot traffic, with approximately 104.9 million shoppers visiting stores, up from 92.3 million in 2020. The overall number of online shoppers decreased to a total of 127.8 million from 145.4 million last year.
Black Friday remained the most popular day for in-store shopping, with 66.5 million shoppers, followed by 51 million shoppers on Small Business Saturday. The importance of supporting local businesses remained top of mind for many consumers, with 71 percent indicating they were shopping specifically for Small Business Saturday. Similar to recent years, Black Friday surpassed Cyber Monday in terms of total online shoppers, with 88 million shopping online the Friday after Thanksgiving compared with 77 million on Monday.
Thanksgiving weekend shoppers spent an average of $301.27 on holiday-related purchases such as gifts, décor, apparel and toys. This is down slightly from $311.75 in 2020. As in previous years, most ($215.40) of that amount was spent directly on gifts.
Top gift purchases over the weekend included clothing and accessories (bought by 51 percent of those surveyed), toys (32 percent), gift cards/certificates (28 percent), books/music/movies/video games (27 percent) and electronics (24 percent).
With a longer holiday shopping season, consumers have welcomed the flexibility it offers. The vast majority (84 percent) of holiday shoppers reported they have started shopping and have completed more than half (52 percent) of their holiday purchases on average
NRF defines the holiday season as November 1 through December 31 and has forecast that sales will grow between 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent over 2020 to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion.
Read more about the holiday season at the NRF Winter Holiday Headquarters.
