After eating turkey on Thanksgiving, buyers were expected to flock to stores in the United States in record numbers to snap up “Black Friday” deals, but today, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, saw only a few numbers on store doors as the weather cooled.
“Only regarding 20 people have come through the self-checkout machines so far,” said Jimena Silva, an employee of the Target store in Raleigh, North Carolina, which witnessed heavy rain on Friday.
Silva, 23, added that the number of customers in the store was higher in previous seasons, but she expects more visitors to come later.
According to the National Association of Retailers, an estimated 166.3 million people plan to shop from Thanksgiving to the Monday following, which is regarding eight million more shoppers than last year.
But with occasional rain in some parts of the country, shops were less crowded than expected on Black Friday morning.
A report from “Adobe Analytics” showed that US shoppers’ spending on online purchases increased 3 percent on Thanksgiving this year, with mobile purchases leading the increase. Online Black Friday sales are expected to reach $9 billion, up a modest 1 percent from last year.
Retail companies offer deep discounts, both online and in their stores, which may hurt margins in the fourth quarter of the year.
