THE Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday kickoff of the U.S. holiday shopping season showed the increasing preference for online purchases, as more Americans opted to stay home and use their smartphones while sales and traffic at brick-and-mortar stores declined.

The ongoing shift to online shopping has forced retailers across the country to invest heavily in boosting their e-commerce businesses, and also highlights the impact of early holiday promotions and year-round deals on consumer spending.

A healthy economy and rising wages gave people the confidence to splash out on retailers’ annual raft of bargains.

The weekend also redefined the importance of Black Friday. For the past few years, Black Friday was believed to be waning in importance, but it is now turning into a day when shoppers do not necessarily flock to stores but spend heavily online.

Bill Park, a partner at Deloitte & Touche LP, said online sales are starting to complement in-store shopping over the weekend, and for shoppers and retailers the two platforms are starting to converge.

This is happening more and more as retailers like Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. sell both online and through stores, making winning the transaction more important than where it occurs, retail consultants and analysts said.

Online sales rose more than 23 percent, crossing US$6 billion on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at 80 of the top 100 U.S. retailers. On Thanksgiving, it estimated sales grew 28 percent to US$3.7 billion.

Preliminary data from analytics firm RetailNext showed net sales at brick-and-mortar stores fell 4 to 7 percent over the two days, while traffic fell 5 to 9 percent, continuing the trend of recent years. No data was yet available for actual spending in stores.

Early numbers showed overall retail sales, both in stores and online, were in line with expectations, according to Mastercard Inc.’s SpendingPulse retail report. The firm expects overall Black Friday sales to top US$23 billion this year, up from US$21 billion last year.

In 2017, brick-and-mortar sales were down 8.9 percent for the weekend year over year, and shopper traffic fell 4.4 percent. In 2016, store sales were down 4.2 percent and traffic was down 4.4 percent, according to RetailNext.

The decrease in store foot traffic is a little greater than it has been in years past, though still within expectations, RetailNext spokesperson Ray Hartjen said.

The National Retail Federation forecasted U.S. holiday retail sales in November and December will increase between 4.3 and 4.8 percent over 2017, for a total of US$717.45 billion to US$720.89 billion. (SD-Agencies)