Does The Huge Increase In Mobile Shopping On Black Friday Mean In-Store Shopping Will Soon Be Obsolete?

Mobile shopping is something that has been getting more and more popular over the years, but it saw a rise in popularity this holiday weekend. A huge number of Americans chose to take advantage of online sales rather than going out to stores on Black Friday, and they accessed these sales via their smartphones and tablets rather than using their desktop computers.

According to Fox 40, there were 21.5 percent more digital sales on Black Friday this year than there were last year. That’s a huge percentage increase in just one year. The amount of spending increased quite a bit to go along with the amount of people shopping online. Fox 40 also reports that mobile shopping brought in more than $2.7 billion to retailers on Black Friday, which is 14.3 percent more than last year.

With most retailers having their own special smartphone and tablet apps, consumers were able to access special deals more easily than ever, which is likely part of the reason why mobile shopping increased exponentially this year. CNN Money reported that smartphones were the devices used most often this Black Friday; 45 percent of mobile shopping on Black Friday was completed via smartphones. The second most popular devices used by consumers were tablets. However, CNN Money goes on to say that tablet orders were larger than smartphone orders. The average tablet order came to just under $150, which is more than the average order on any other type of device.

Fox 40 reports that Thanksgiving day and Black Friday crowds were smaller in 2015 than they have been in previous years. Less people are going out to the stores to shop and the total amount of money spent in person was less than last year, as well.

Why are people choosing to buy digitally rather than in person? For one thing, it’s much easier to stay in bed or at least in one’s pajamas the morning after Thanksgiving rather than running out to the store. Not to mention that online shoppers don’t have to face huge crowds of people. Orders can typically be placed immediately, without having to stand out in the cold in the middle of the night waiting in Black Friday’s infamously long lines just to get a good deal. Granted, the weather was a lot nicer than usual in most states on Black Friday 2015, but the lines themselves are enough to still drive people to seek out alternatives.

Continuing on with the theme of not waiting, online sales started earlier for mobile shoppers than they did for those who went out to retail stores. While retailers pushed the envelope even further this year by opening on Thanksgiving day (JC Penney pushed their opening time to 3 p.m. this year, for example), several stores like Kohl’s, Macy’s, Express, and Best Buy made their Black Friday deals available online as early as Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Some stores called these “pre-Black Friday deals,” but others didn’t bother. The same deals customers would see in stores were available to them on mobile devices the day before Thanksgiving. While not everyone shopped that early on, it gave shoppers plenty of time to scope out the deals and plan their mobile shopping so they were ready to go when Black Friday came.

The fact that mobile shopping’s convenience won over huge numbers of people on Black Friday is really no surprise. The only question is, how will this affect Cyber Monday sales? Are people all shopped out since they’ve been taking advantage of online sales for the better part of a week already? Or, is there still plenty of mobile shopping to do? Did you shop digitally on Black Friday and how will it affect your choice to participate in Cyber Monday? Let us know in the Comments section below.