Sensormatic Solutions released a comprehensive ShopperTrak recap of shopper traffic during Black Friday weekend 2019, the period spanning Thanksgiving Day, November 28, through Sunday, December 1. The data found that store traffic for the 2019 Black Friday weekend resulted in a 4.0% decrease compared to 2018. Store traffic on Saturday, Nov. 30, resulted in a 2.6% decrease, and traffic on Sunday, Dec. 1, resulted in a 7.5% decrease.
On Saturday, traffic increased 0.9% in the Northeast and decreased in all other regions, including Midwest (-10.1%), South (-1.2%), and West (-2.6%). On Sunday, traffic was down significantly by 30% in the Northeast and only down nominally in other regions, including Midwest (-1.4%), South (-3.8%), and West (-1.7%).
“The winter storm that hit most of the Northeast massively impacted in-store traffic patterns for the Thanksgiving weekend,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting for ShopperTrak. “The Saturday after Black Friday is always one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season and, this year, shoppers in the Northeast came out in record numbers. Our results showed that many consumers in this region anticipated the storm and did most of their shopping on Saturday instead of Sunday this year.”
Cyber Monday
Sensormatic also looked at the effect of Cyber Monday on brick-and-mortar retail traffic on Monday and found that this year’s traffic increased 0.5%.
“This year we saw an overall increase in store traffic on Cyber Monday,” said Field. “Our data historically indicates that Cyber Monday has little impact on in-store traffic. We attribute the uptick this year to some regional snowfall last year and the growing trend of buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS). Many consumers made their purchases online when stores were crowded and elected to pick them up on Monday when stores were not as busy.”
Sensormatic also analyzed traffic on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. After all data was tallied, the final results found that store traffic on Thanksgiving resulted in a 0.8% decrease and store traffic on Black Friday resulted in a 4.4% decrease. Data for the combined two-day period resulted in a 3.6% decline in traffic. A slight variation from what was originally reported, Black Friday remains the busiest holiday shopping day by a landslide.
The full list of predicted busiest shopping days in the US is as follows:
11/29/2019 – Black Friday
12/21/2019 – Super Saturday (Saturday before Christmas)
12/26/2019 – Day after Christmas, aka “Boxing Day,” in some global regions
12/14/2019 – Two Saturdays before Christmas
11/30/2019 – Saturday after Black Friday
12/22/2019 – Sunday before Christmas
12/23/2019 – Monday before Christmas
12/28/2019 – Saturday after Christmas
12/27/2019 – Friday after Christmas
12/07/2019 – First Saturday in December
The predicted top busiest shopping days in Canada include:
12/26/2019 – Boxing Day
11/29/2019 – Black Friday
11/30/2019 – Saturday after Black Friday
12/21/2019 – Super Saturday (Saturday before Christmas)
12/14/2019 – Two Saturdays before Christmas
