Black Friday Online Sales Far Outpace Brick-and-Mortor Shopping Numbers

At IBD, "Has Black Friday Jumped the Shark? Importance Fading?":

Black Friday's importance as the key shopping day of the year is ending, observers say, as Thanksgiving Day sales zoom and easy mobile shopping makes other days just as important.

The strong trend of online sales growth far surpassing offline sales continues, though.

Cowen analyst Oliver Chen estimates that while online traffic during Black Friday weekend will rise 20% vs. a year earlier, in-store traffic will fall 2% to 4%.

Online sales have enjoyed double-digit growth rates since the dawn of the e-commerce era.

Adobe Systems' (NASDAQ: ADBE) Adobe Digital Index, which says it measures 80% of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers, said sales between midnight and 11 a.m. ET Friday rose 15% from the year-earlier period, to $822 million.

Thanksgiving Day online shopping, however, jumped 25% vs. Thanksgiving 2014, to $1.72 billion.

Third-party sales even on top site Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) grew far greater year-over-year on Thanksgiving than they will on Black Friday, Scot Wingo, executive chairman of Channel Advisor (NYSE: ECOM), a firm that helps third parties sell on e-com sites, told IBD.

"Thanksgiving came on the scene two years ago, and it's really blown the doors off," Wingo said. Black Friday growth, on the other hand, was "OK," he said.

"This is the year we'll look back and say Black Friday jumped the shark," Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Group, told IBD...

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