Sources:  National Retail Federation, TechFlash.com, Wall Street Journal, American Express

Consumers who gobbled up great deals holiday shopping on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday helped secure a spot in the record books, with traffic and spending up both online and in stores, reaching historic highs.  According to the National Retail Federation survey conducted by BIGresearch over the weekend, Thanksgiving and Black Friday spending reached a record $52 Billion and Thanksgiving Day early bird shoppers were the highest in survey history. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 212 million last year. The average holiday shopper spent $398.62 this weekend, up from $365.34 last year. Additionally, shoppers also checked out retailers’ deals online, spending an average of $150.53 on the web – 37.8 percent of their total weekend spending.

“While online shopping has shown to be more popular,” said Gregg Broujos, Founding Principal at Colliers International | Pittsburgh, “we are definitely seeing an increase in interest from bricks and mortar retailers.”

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