Thanksgiving weekend shopping = good economic news!
Shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend provided even more good enconomic news!
More and more shopping centers were open after midnight last Thursday, and they launched RECORD numbers of shoppers into Black Friday and through the holiday weekend. The Santa Cruz Sentinel notes:
Around the Bay Area and across the country, from the big chains to the mom-and-pop gift shops, at outlets both online and off, shopkeepers saw a record 247 million shoppers in stores and websites over the four-day weekend, up from 226 million last year, according to a National Retail Federation survey.
Seduced by door-buster deals that had consumers lined up by the hundreds outside stores such as the new H&M on Santana Row, the average holiday shopper spent $423 this weekend, up from $398 last year.
Here in Silicon Valley, where robust job growth is fueling consumer spending and jamming the roadways with new commuters, retailers said their holiday season got off with a bang. And the newfound exuberance seemed to cut across all categories, from 4 a.m. lines outside Sears at Eastridge Mall to clanging cash registers at humble neighborhood clothing boutiques.
Let me repeat one fact from above – that California is experiencing ROBUST GROWTH in Silicon Valley jobs. Silicon Valley, with its tendency to make a FEW people VERY rich, and another tendency to discriminate is several VERY illegal ways, nonetheless is often one of the FIRST places to be affected by an recession and one of the FIRST places to LEAD the entire country OUT of a recession. It is very good news when Silicon Valley experiences robust growth.
Another important fact that we hear from economists is that CONSUMER SPENDING is what drives economic recovery, and guess what? It’s happening!
Benny Boveda, district manager for eight Target stores in the San Jose area, said, “We saw crowds that were much larger than last year, especially at that earlier 9 p.m. opening on Thanksgiving. Last year we opened at midnight, and we really noticed the difference this year.
“And not only were shoppers coming in for the electronics door-buster sales,” he said, “but they lingered and kept shopping longer, buying things like apparel goods, home furnishings and toys.”
“We had a line of people when we opened Friday morning,” said Alex Barnia, manager of Powell’s Sweet Shoppe in Willow Glen, whose high-end, European-made candies have long made great stocking stuffers. “Our business this weekend was up maybe 30 percent over last year. The economy is coming back and people are out there spending more, often rewarding themselves for their own hard work, I think.”
And they SHOULD reward themselves! The American customers of the working class have borne the burden of the Great Recession and the financial crisis that started it. Now, things are starting to look better again. I tell schoolchildren that it will become important for them to REWARD THEMSELVES because “nobody ELSE will!” 😉 Many American businesses have still not learned that POSITIVE re-enforcement is more effective in boosting productivity than the negative re-enforcement that they have used for years.
I believe, when you factor in turnover and re-training, that positive re-enforcement employed with existing employees is CHEAPER too!
THEN, there were the “crazy” stores with “…almost-too-good-to-be-true storewide discounts, like the one at Hollister at Eastridge Mall.”
“They had 50 percent sale off everything in the store,” said Melanie Black, spokeswoman for the 150-outlet center off East Capitol Expressway. “At one point, there were 300 people waiting to get inside. Security would only let 15 people in at a time because the store wasn’t big enough to handle the crowds.”
WOW! As you can probably tell by my lack of personal anecdotes, I HATE the marketing hype around “door-buster” sales and Black Friday, and I tend to do much of my shopping online. However, I know better than to call myself a “typical” consumer.
There was another trend that merchants noticed – that “door-buster” shopping seems to have become a “family affair” with lots of young children who would (and should) normally have been in bed! What merchants MAY not understand is that the savings made by waiting in line to shop can EASILY by eliminated by the cost of child care or baby sitting. People are doing what they have to do to have a good life in bad, but recovering, economic times.
Black Friday weekend by the numbers:
$59.1 billion: Number of dollars spent online and offline by holiday shoppers over the four-day weekend
247 million: Number of shoppers who took to the streets or the Internet this year over Black Friday weekend (including Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
226 million: Number of shoppers last year
$423: Number of dollars the average shopper spent online or in stores over the weekend this year
$398: Number of dollars they spent last year
$172: Number of dollars the average shopper spent online
28: Percentage of holiday shoppers who were at the stores by midnight ThursdaySource: National Retail Federation
-Bill at
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