Once again, Black Friday is upon us! Here are 5 interesting statistics around Black Friday and what they mean for retail.

Sales are Growing: There are many statistics floated around that question the existence of the Retail Apocalypse - we have even written about this in a previous post. But Moody’s, for one, expects 5% to 6% growth in retail sales this Black Friday, and the National Retail Federation projects overall holiday season sales to increase by 4.1% this year. The total spend for Black Friday weekend is estimated to hit $59.6 billion with the best growth since 2011, according to estimates by GlobalData Retail.
Online and Physical retail shopping are both relevant: Whether in-store or online, some 164 million Americans will go shop at some point over the holiday weekend. 71% will hit the stores on Black Friday. That’s roughly 116 million shoppers. This according to research by the National Retail Federation.
At least 77 retailers kept stores closed on Thanksgiving but others, such as Macy's, Kohl's and JCPenny opened on Thanksgiving day - with some social media blacklash, asking shoppers to boycott these stores. JCPenny opened up earlier than others, with a 2pm start on Thanksgiving day. It's a fine line to walk to make customers happy - between offering early Black Friday deals and encroaching on Thanksgiving day.
Black Friday may be becoming a month long phenomenon. Shoppers spent $2.4 billion online on Wednesday, an increase by 31.8% from 2017, and by 5pm on Thanksgiving day, had spent another $1.75 billion (a 28.6% growth from last year), according to Adobe Analytics data. Promotions started just after Halloween, and will continue well after Cyber Monday.