Early Results for Thanksgiving Weekend Spending – Let’s Get Some Perspective

Let’s keep some perspective on the Thanksgiving weekend shopping. For starters it only accounts for about 10% of holiday shopping. Second, the early numbers are result from a survey and are subject to error. Third, the Thanksgiving weekend shopping is not a good indicator of how the holiday season will turn out. So, why all the hoopla, it gives all the business news people something to talk about. Text in bold is my emphasis. From Market Watch:

Deep discounts and extended hours drew more than 147 million shoppers to U.S. stores over the four-day Thanksgiving holiday shopping period, but average consumer spending fell, a retailers' group said on Sunday.

The survey, which included data from Thursday to Saturday and projections for Sunday, showed customers spent an average of $347.44, down 3.5 percent from $360.15 last year.

But the decline was offset by a 4.8 percent increase in the number of shoppers, making the weekend's total spending results "extremely similar" with last year, said federation spokeswoman Ellen Davis.

While fears about lower home values, a shaky stock market and higher costs for food and fuel could have played some role, Davis said the decline was more due to the focus this year on mid-priced items like laptop computers and digital photo frames, versus last year's emphasis on expensive high-definition televisions.

"It takes a lot of $400 laptops to reach the same level as the $1,300 high-definition TV," Davis said.

SpendingPulse, the retail data service of MasterCard Inc (MA.N) unit MasterCard Advisors, estimated total spending for Friday through Sunday will reach $42 billion to $43 billion. That would be a 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent increase over last year.

SpendingPulse tracks sales activity in the MasterCard payments network and couples it with estimates of all other payment forms.

According to a Reuters/Zogby poll from last week a growing number of U.S. consumers said they planned to spend less on gifts this holiday season amid concerns about the U.S. housing downturn and fears that the economy might be heading toward a recession.

"This weekend, as big as it is, only represents about 10 percent of total holiday shopping volume. We still have 90 percent of the season in front of us," McNamara said. "The growth rate you see on this holiday weekend doesn't necessarily translate to the growth rate you see for the overall season," he added.

"Black Friday is not generally a great indicator of the holiday season overall, but it can give us a sense of consumer sentiment," Davis said.