The so-called "Grey Thursday" pre-Black Friday rush didn't seem to stop Walmart from having its best Black Friday ever. So how did it all play out over the weekend, and as Cyber Monday morphs into Mobile Monday?

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Total spending for the weekend reached an estimated $59.1 billion, a 13% increase from a year ago, according to the National Retail Federation. Last year the group said sales rose 16% over the weekend. A consumer survey conducted for the trade association by BIGinsight found that shoppers spent an average of $423 over the weekend, up 6% from $398 last Thanksgiving weekend."

As noted by Reuters, comScore estimated that "Black Friday sales during the 24 hours of November 23 passed $1 billion ($1.042 billion) in online sales for the first time, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2012 (with 57 million shoppers visiting e-commerce sites) and a 26-percent increase versus Black Friday 2011. Thanksgiving Day (November 22), while traditionally a lighter day for online holiday spending, achieved a strong 32-percent increase to $633 million."

According to IBM's Black Friday 2012 report, US shoppers once again took advantage of early promotions this holiday season, driving a 17.4 percent increase in online sales Thanksgiving Day. This increase set the stage for 20.7 percent growth on Black Friday. Online sales on Black Friday increased 21% over last year, IBM estimated by analyzing data from 500 retailers, including 50 of the 100 largest web retailers. The biggest surge came from mobile consumers, with sales reaching 16.3 percent, led by the iPad. Other takeaways by IBM:Continue reading...

"Buyer beware" applies now, more than ever, as holiday shoppers take to the web and mobile to snap up bargains. According to the latest MarkMonitor Shopping Report, one in five bargain hunters in the U.S. and Europe mistakenly shopped on e-commerce sites selling counterfeit goods while searching for deals online.

“Consumers are being waylaid by rogue e-commerce sites, causing brands to lose business. The findings from our Shopping Report underscore the importance of developing proactive brand protection strategies in the digital age,” said Fredrick Felman, chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor, Thomson Reuters' enterprise brand protection business.

Working with Nielsen “to analyze anonymized data from Nielsen’s permissioned online panelists in six countries over a nine-month period, nearly five million shopping sessions were surveyed…focusing on the search terms the shoppers employed, such as 'fake,’ 'replica,’ 'cheap' or ‘discount,’ to determine their motivation.”

The MarkMonitor Shopping Report examined multiple demographics including age, income, education levels, and household size, and found that there are only minimal differences between online consumers seeking counterfeit goods and bargain hunters looking for a good deal on legitimate goods.

“These findings really challenge the common assumption that consumers who purchase counterfeit goods are distinctly different than those consumers buying genuine goods,” said Eric Solomon, SVP, global digital audience measurement, Nielsen.

“Deal seekers outnumbered consumers seeking fakes at the rate of 20 to 1,” notes the release from MarkMonitor, but deceptive pricing on counterfeit goods, often priced comparably to legitimate goods on sale, discounted at 25–50% off list prices, suggest ‘blowout’ or year-ender sales and lure unsuspecting shoppers.Continue reading...

Americans are shopping en masse on mobile devices and increasingly in unusual places, including (ahem!) on the toilet, according to new research from CashStar, the digital gifting and incentives firm. And not because they're supporters of World Toilet Day.

Apparently, more than 38 million online adult Americans have shopped in the can — men, it seems, more prone to that kind of multitasking than women, in case you were wondering — while almost 17 million have shopped on their mobile device while standing in the retailer's physical store.

"Smartphones and tablets have enabled consumers to shop and gift on-the-go in more ways and places than ever before," said David Stone, co-founder and CEO of CashStar.

Other report findings include:

• More than four million have shopped online while driving a car.
• More than nine million admitted secretly shopping while in a business meeting.
• More than seven million have filled their grocery and online shopping carts at the same time.

"The retailers who have been paying attention and catering to where and how consumers want to shop by mobile-optimizing their e-commerce sites and offering mobile eGift Cards will reap the rewards this holiday season and have a jump on the competition going into 2013,” added Stone.Continue reading...

Luxury brands can take some comfort from at least one new forecast. Luxury spending is poised to make a comeback next year in the US — but on a modest scale, according to the Luxury Shopping Survey, just published by Accenture.

Of the more than 2,000 U.S. adults surveyed, half of them said they are likely to make a "small" luxury purchase in the next six months. What categories would move them from "likely" to "definitely"? The items they indicated they're ready to splurge on include specialty food or drinks (53 percent of respondents), luxury clothing (48 percent) and luxury personal care products (48 percent). More than half (57 percent) intend to purchase luxury apparel that they could mix into their everyday wardrobe.

"Consumers want a taste of luxury in their everyday lives, and are willing to spend a little extra for the experience, but the emphasis is on small items," commented Tom Jacobson, managing director of the Accenture Pricing & Profit Optimization practice. "They may think twice about purchasing a new handbag, but shop for a wallet as an alternative."Continue reading...

It’s a great day for President Obama, and a pretty good one for Nate Silver as well, the political prognosticator and statistician for the New York Times whose model proved accurate – where Gallup’s, among others, did not. As Buzzfeed quipped, "Nate Silver Wins the Election."

Here’s how right he was: correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states yesterday, predicted Obama winning Virginia and Florida by very small margins and projected Obama would win the popular vote by 2%. The only race he missed: Montana's senate race.

“The real loser last night, outside of Mitt Romney and Republicans of course, was the political pundit class,” notes the Examiner. “The pundits have lost credibility as they swear up and down on the eve of the election that the polls must be wrong. Anything can happen, but in 2016 readers would best put their confidence in hard poll numbers as opposed to the “gut feeling” of someone on a cable news network.”

Formerly a standalone website, Silver's data-crunching FiveThirtyEight blog drew huge traffic for the NYTimes.com, which licensed it for three years in 2010. Turns out the controversy his predictions engendered brought supporters and critics to his site – like moths to the light – a best-of-breed example on the power of personal branding.Continue reading...

Tesco made headlines a year ago when its HomePlus retail subsidiary in South Korea tested a virtual store in a Seoul subway station, showcasing items that could be scanned and ordered by smartphone for home delivery, while Peapod is testing virtual grocery shopping in the U.S.

Now Walmart is testing a similar idea in Toronto in partnership with Mattel. The retail and toy giants are teaming up on what's described as Canada's first pop-up virtual toy store, enabling QR code-based shopping of Mattel brands — including hot toys from Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends brands — to holiday shoppers.

The pop-up is located in the city's massive PATH underground walkway, a retail concouse that connects downtown buildings and and an array of businesses to Toronto's Union Station rail commuter hub. It may find a ready pool of virtual shoppers, as it will run for four weeks in the same location where Wells.ca tested a QR-enabled store in April.Continue reading...

It's not the kind of message that auto marketers want to hear as they experiment feverishly with social media and get ready to plop down really big bucks on TV ads in the next Super Bowl, but brand loyalty is fading among American car buyers.

Among the reasons — according to Experian's 2012 study on corporate and brand loyalty (see infographic below) cited by Time.com — is that Americans are holding on to cars longer. The average age of the nation's "car park" has exceeded more than 10 years for the first time. The resulting "pent-up" demand is helping fuel a strong and steady recovery in U.S. car sales. But the fact that buyers wait longer times before visits to dealerships is eroding their brand loyalty.

Another factor swaying car brand loyalty: the plethora of information now available online that makes it easier than ever to assess vehicle models. The more car buyers learn, TIME notes, the more likely they are to switch brand loyalty.Continue reading...

Makers of name brand products beware: Store brands continue to be accepted and embraced by consumers.

Last July, we reported on a study by Accenture indicating that 64 percent of shoppers' grocery carts were at least half full of store brand products -- and 39 percent said they had bought more store brands in recent years.

Now a new study by marketing agency The Integer Group, in association with the market research firm M/A/R/C Research, shows that consumers increasingly believe store brands can match brand names in quality. In fact, in the 2012 study, 64 percent of shoppers said brand names are not better quality products, versus 57 percent in 2010. Only 51 percent of shoppers say they continue to buy brand name products over store-brand alternatives because they trust the brand name, according to the study. Only 20 percent of shoppers agree that they go right for their brand name choice and get what they want.

Just as important, there seems to be a broad change in the perception of store brand or private label products. As store brands have grown in popularity, groceries and retail chains have created their own branded lines. Target, for example, sells its own Archer Farms brand, and Whole Foods pitches its 365 Everyday Value line.

In recent years, such retailers have paid more attention to packaging so their products can be competitive on store shelves. It must be paying off. Only a year ago, 68 percent of shoppers agreed that brand name packaging was more attractive than store brand packaging, according to the study. This year, the percentage dropped to just over half — 52 percent of shoppers.Continue reading...