4 Reasons Retail Store Traffic Was Down This Black Friday

By all accounts, there were less people out shopping on Black Friday this year. There are articles about it, the local news was at stores and malls showing the smaller crowds and by my own eye test, being out in the thick of it (it's family tradition, after all!) I could see there were less people. So, why is that? The economy and consumer confidence seem to be trending upward or at least stable. Retailers were certainly out there touting big sale offers. And maybe, as sales figures roll in, sales were still good, even with less traffic.

In our Monday status meeting yesterday, we had a long talk about some of the reasons for the smaller Black Friday crowds. Here are some of them:

Stores open Thursday diluted the crowds. Although some stores got good publicity for annoucing they would not be open Thanksgiving – the trend towards opening up later on Thanksgiving has hit critical mass. A lot of stores open early and this has a two-fold effect on Black Friday traffic. The most obvious one being that they pull a lot of shoppers up into a day earlier shopping frenzy. The cashier I talked to at Target on Friday said they'd been steady but the bigger crowds had come when they opened at 6pm Thanksgiving evening. NRF figures concur, saying although 74 million shopped on Black Friday, nearly half that number, 35 million, shopped on Thanksgiving day.

Secondly, and less obvious, by pulling some of the more rabid shoppers into shopping a day early, the excitement and competitive drive to get the best deal first isn't nearly as strong Friday morning. Those are psychological edges that push more shoppers out the door and onto your sales floor. If they're not there, the urge isn't as strong.

Online shopping is gaining ground. With the deals just as good online as in-store, many people shopped from home instead of braving the crowds. Stores aren't waiting for Cyber Monday to offer their best deals online – you can find most, if not all, of the deals online. ComScore reported that online shopping was up 9% on Thanksgiving and 10% on Black Friday. That's a sizable chunk of shoppers who aren't adding to the Black Friday crowd, but are adding to the sales.

Retailers Offered Early and Often. Another trend has been for retail marketing to push Black Friday into a multi-week event. Retailers were offering "Black Friday deals before Black Friday" for weeks before the actual day. Some held "Black Saturday" events the weekend before. Many of the car companies were touting month-long Black Friday deals. All this may be pulling your customers shopping forward, but it also means less customers left in the market come the actual Black Friday. This might not be bad, however, if your overall sales for the month are up.

Payday for many Americans came just after the weekend. The way Thanksgiving fell, many people who get paid on the last day of the month, which was Monday, had Black Friday fall right before payday. And to make matters worse, for those getting 15th and end of month paychecks, it was at the end of a 3 weekend pay period. So, there were a lot of people who may have felt cash poor, going three weekends since their last paycheck. Offers of low financing may have helped with some of those people, but some had to feel the psychological strain of having less cash to work with.

Those are four good reasons Black Friday crowds may have been down. But as you can see, they might not have meant sales were down. You have to look at a longer period than just the 4-day holiday weekend to see if the trend was up overall. And if they weren't we have a number of retail marketing strategies that will boost your holiday sales in last week's post. So, now that the big shopping weekend is over, what did you see in your stores? Have any other theories on why retail traffic was down? I'd love to hear them.

Mike McClure, Long Time Black Friday Shopper