It’s been a banner year so far for online holiday shopping.
Fresh records for online shopping were set on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s some question, however, as to whether the online holiday shopping growth — in total up 7.8% from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, according to Adobe — is a good sign or bad sign for brick-and-mortar merchants.
From Axios:
E-commerce sales don’t tell the whole story.
The segment makes up less than 16% of U.S. retail sales.
The National Retail Federation separately reported on Tuesday that more than 200 million people shopped online and in-person during the five day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — exceeding last year’s record number of 196 million. […]
Thanksgiving fell early this year, which may have boosted numbers. Same goes for “favorable” weather, according to NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay.
On the other hand, overall traffic to in-person retail locations was down slightly. From Reuters:
Online shoppers rose 3.1% to 134.2 million during the Thanksgiving weekend, making up for a slight dip in the number of customers who visited brick-and-mortar stores. The period saw about 121.4 million in-store shoppers, down from 122.7 million in 2022, according to the retail body.
Today we’re wondering how these numbers translate locally. Are Arlingtonians shifting more of their holiday spending online? Or are they still supporting local shops?
We have two polls, below, to try to gauge the state of local retail.