Despite the hunt for bargains, a study from First Insight found shoppers are willing to dig deep into wallets for desired products, and there could be opportunities to slice sales. Seventy-five percent of those polled said they are happy to pay full price for gifts.
Health and beauty registered as a top category traffic driver on Black Friday, posting an 18.9 percent leap in physical store traffic versus last year, according to RetailNext.
Data from the National Retail Federation’s annual survey showed that a record 196.7 million Americans shopped in stores and online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday during the five-day holiday shopping period. Shopping traffic was the highest figure NRF has ever tracked since it began monitoring shopping behavior in 2017. The totals shattered initial projections, leading NRF to predict that sales from November 1 through December 31 will at least match previously established sales growth forecasts of between 6 percent and 8 percent over 2021 to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion.