Amazon dominated the Black Friday sales – almost half of all online transactions were via Amazon, according to marketing research.
“We believe Amazon had an ‘eye-popping’ Black Friday sales performance as we estimate Amazon comprised between 45% to 50% of all e-commerce sales thus far,” Daniel Ives of GBH Insights wrote in a brief at the end of the business day on Black Friday.
He also notes since Black Friday online sales are up overall, it bodes well for Amazon’s bottom line.
READ MORE: Black Friday sales surge Thanksgiving evening, reach $1.52B in U.S.
Adobe Analytics said as of 10 a.m. ET sales rang in at $640 million, up 18.4 per cent from a year ago.
It forecast that online sales would reach a record $5 billion for the day, with internet retailers projected to rake in an additional $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday.
Amazon hasn’t commented on its sale figures yet, but told Business Insider that shopping in the U.S. was at “record levels.”
It said some top sellers were the Amazon Echo Dot, the Amazon Fire TV Stick, the TP-Link smart plug, the Instant Pot DUO, and the 23andMe DNA test. Three of those items are made by Amazon.
The increase in online sales might be one of the reasons in-person Black Friday shopping has waned.
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There wasn’t as much of the typical Black Friday frenzy from years before, even as some stores appeared to be getting creative with gimmicks besides heavy discounts to draw in customers.
No actual data for Friday’s brick-and-mortar business was immediately available.
Mark Cohen, Columbia Business School’s director of retail studies, says the lack of enthusiasm for physically shopping has become meaningless.
“Retailers are desperate — they’re offering discounts weeks in advance, so what more is there to do? There’s no urgency anymore,” he told the Washington Post.
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The ongoing or week-long sale trend has also hit the brick-and-mortar stores.
A Macy’s employee in New Jersey told Reuters it was less busy on Friday because the store had been open, and packed, on Thursday.
“They’re all online,” said Sarah Jones, 42, an employee at Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island. “I’ve worked in retail my whole life, trust me.”
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But USA Today business correspondent Charisse Jones said it’ll still be years before Black Friday dies.
“They’ve been talking about the death of Black Friday for 10 years,” she told CBS News. “I don’t think it’s going to go completely away.
“Most sales still happen in stores, 80-90% of all sales happen at a brick and mortar store front so it’s going to be a while before Black Friday completely disappears.”
READ MORE: Despite the deals, some say Black Friday is losing its lustre
Here and there were signs of the pandemonium for which Black Friday has long been known.
A confrontation between two men in the parking lot of Willowbrook Mall in Houston left one shot and the other stabbed, though the origins of the clash and whether it was shopping-related was not immediately known, police said.
*with files from Reuters
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