(This article was originally published earlier Thursday.)
By Karen Talley
As many as 147 million people plan to visit stores Black Friday
weekend--Friday, Saturday and Sunday--a slight decrease from the
152 million who planned to do so last year, the National Retail
Federation said based on a survey it conducted earlier this
month.
The survey suggests some 71 million will shop with intentions to
buy and another 76 million will wait and see what retailers have in
store for that day.
"Black Friday--the tradition--will never go away, but there's no
question that it has changed in recent years" to become a weekend
event, said NRF CEO Matthew Shay.
Last year's Black Friday weekend sales were $52.4 billion, the
trade group said.
Half of the respondents in the NRF survey said they will keep up
with advertising circulars throughout the holiday season and three
in 10 say they will use television advertisements to stay up to
date with upcoming sales and events.
There are also those who prefer to do things digitally, and
retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), Macy's Inc. (M), Saks
Inc. (SKS) and Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) have been sharpening up
their online tools. A little over 25% of consumers will follow
retailers' websites and about 30% will track e-mails from retailers
in order to get the latest holiday announcements.
Through sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest as well as
company blogs, emails and mobile apps, consumers can connect with
retailers.
Retailers' online, mobile and in-store promotions, especially
for their Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday offerings, continue to
grow. According to the NRF, three in 10 multichannel retailers say
they will promote their in-store Black Friday deals with mobile
alerts, up significantly from the 18% who planned to do so last
year. Additionally, 81% will use Facebook to alert shoppers about
in-store deals, up from 74% last year.
The survey polled 9,383 consumers and was conducted from Nov. 1
to Nov. 6. The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus
1%.
Write to Karen Talley at karen.talley@dowjones.com
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