Thanksgiving Weekend Spending Increase Over Previous Year

by Gordon Clark | December 1, 2009 at 09:55 am

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American Thanksgiving weekend shopping increased in 2009 compared to 2008. While individual spending was down, the amount of shoppers and the total amount spent was up despite a country wide average of fewer and smaller discounts.

The amount of money shelled out at the shops this weekend hit $41.2bn (£25bn) - a rise of 0.5% on 2008.

Even so, credit-crunched Americans spent around 8% less each than normal, an average of $343, in the days following last Thursday's holiday.

The total was higher because more of them - 195 million - shopped either online or by going out to stores.

The Thanksgiving weekend and Black Friday:
The National Retail Federation reported that one third of last weekends shoppers were waiting outside since before 5am.

Online shoppers had the biggest gains. Comscore, the analytics firm said Spending on Black Friday hit a record $595 million - an 11% increase over 2008. Shadowing the increase in online shopping, Amazon share prices reached an all time high - over 3 times the price that it was at exactly one year ago.

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