We’ve had our fun. We’ve shopped, we’ve ordered, we’ve acquired a whole bunch of cool new stuff. Now with Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, we can finally get back to business. And what better way to re-acclimate than to do some numbers?

There’s a lot of data haze surrounding this year’s Black Friday. Shoppertrak, an analytics firm, posted results of a 1 percent increase in sales and a 4 percent decrease in shopper traffic from 2012. In direct contrast, the National Retail Federation claimed that holiday spending fell almost 3 percent, but that shopper count rose 1 percent. Discrepancies in the way data was collected make it difficult to rely on either report for an accurate reading.  

What we do know is that both reports saw a 26.7 percent increase in Thanksgiving Day shopping, making the day-early sales a success for those retailers that just couldn’t wait for Friday (yay?). Both reports also acknowledge the success of Cyber Monday, which, according to the LA Times, was the biggest online shopping day ever. Online sales rose 20.6 percent from 2012, and revenue was up 31.5 percent. 

It was certainly a good performance. But do this year’s results say anything about consumer confidence as the effects of the recession begin to fade?

Well, we know for a fact that it tells us nothing about how the rest of the holiday season is going to go economy-wise. In 2009, Black Friday sales were at a record breaking high, even though total holiday season consumption was low during the recession. People on a budget were eager to take advantage of the marked down prices on products they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford that year. "You can't really look at November and say, 'Oh, it was great. Therefore, we're going to have a great holiday season,'" says Bill Martin, founder of Shoppertrak. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s not to say things aren’t looking up. The National Retail Federation expects a 3.9 percent increase in sales during November and December this year, which is up from the 10-year average holiday sales growth of 3.3 percent. But even though holiday shopping has been on a rise since 2010, and retailers are optimistic for this year, we cannot be sure that sales will return to pre-recession levels until the entire holiday season is over. 

One trend that was a little more substantive was the distinct socialness of this year’s shopping weekend. Buying was dominated by the age class 18-34, according to the National Retail Federation. For these millennials, social media was a huge resource for deal-hunting. Piqora data showed that, on Cyber Monday, revenue generated from Pinterest was up 3.6 times the average. Piqora said that last Monday “people were more in ‘buying’ mode and less in ‘collecting or discovery’ mode.”  While overall clicks on pins didn’t change much, “the shopping intent of those clicks was really high,” resulting in the higher revenue for retailers. 

Triggit reported that Facebook advertising was also a successful marketing channel for many retailers, as Facebook’s retargeting click-through rate nearly doubled on Cyber Monday, with a 34 percent higher conversion rate (the rate of site visitors that become paying customers). 

Though we may not be able to make any definitive predictions about the success of this year’s holiday season, consumer confidence is looking improved and healthier than it has in the past couple of years. What’s more interesting and telling of the future is the success of online shopping, and the ever-increasing tech savvy and social media fluency of consumers. Even if total holiday shopping doesn’t go as well as planned this December, you can be certain that ecommerce will continue to outshine the traditional shopping experience, as shoppers grow more and more comfortable with doing their holiday chores on the internet. 

 

Reach Staff Reporter Andre Gray here.